In 2014, she decided to relocate to Morocco and contribute to the development of her native country. The choice has proven judicious since the healthtech solution she introduced won her national and international awards. 

Zineb Drissi Kaitouni (photo) is a Moroccan entrepreneur and trained financial analyst. In 2014, she co-founded healthtech DabaDoc with Driss Drissi Kaitouni to facilitate access to healthcare and improve the management of medical appointments. Her startup has close to eight million users in several African countries. They use DabaDoc platforms to set appointments with over 10,000 health professionals specialized in more than 100 medical specialties. 

DabaDoc was “initially developed to help health professionals manage their agenda and digitize patient pathways. It now helps digitalize patients’ records and offers a reliable and secure video consultation platform to doctors who have adopted this cutting-edge tool,”  Zineb told Moroccan media La Nouvelle Tribune in March 2022. 

The tech entrepreneur started her professional career, in 2003, as an analyst for Goldman Sachs. In 2012, she co-founded Ruby’s in London, before relocating to Morocco, in 2014, to contribute to the development of her native country. 

She chose the health sector when she found out how challenging it was for the population to access healthcare because of factors like unavailable assistants, and poor appointment management leading to crowded offices. She decided to address those challenges with technology.  

Her choice proved to be a good bet because, thanks to DabaDoc, Zineb has received several national and international awards. She for instance won the first prize in the Global Innovation for Science and Technology in 2014. She also won third prize in the SeedStars World competition the same year.

In 2015, Aspen-Blackstone selected DabaDoc as one of the top 10 startups in the MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) region. Four years later, Zineb was nominated as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and even won the Endeavor Entrepreneur award.

In April 2021, Orange Middle East and Africa entered DabaDoc’s capital. The operator also introduced its payment services to make DabaDoc’s services more accessible and add new services. Thanks to that partnership, the startup launched its services in Côte d’Ivoire, in June 2022.  

Melchior Koba