Startup Booming in Yemen

The biggest startups often respond to basic human needs—be it to eat, or get from A to B—and in few places is this more apparent than in Sanaa, Yemen’s rebel-controlled capital city. With missile strikes, power outages, and fuel shortages a fact of life, many of the city’s small but ambitious band of entrepreneurial businesses have uniquely adapted to the harsh realities of war.

The breakdown in Yemen’s electricity supply, for example, has seen a surge in entrepreneurs launching solar-power ventures. Similarly, frequent fuel shortages have shaped the activities of startups—including those of Yemen’s answer to Zomato or UberEats. Wagbat, unlike similar ventures in more developed startup cities like Dubai or Riyadh, ferries grocery and restaurant orders to customers on a growing fleet of bicycles, rather than just gas-guzzling motorcycles. The constraints of running a wartime startup have given rise to a surprisingly green business, in an otherwise fuel-intensive sector.

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