Magda Habib
Interview with Magda Habib
CO-FOUNDER, DAWI CLINICS
Lives in: Egypt
The Starbucks of healthcare. That is how a series of clinics in Egypt that Magda Habib has co-founded and constructed to 30 branches has been described. Her husband disagrees, saying McDonald’s is a greater comparability, arguing that Starbucks is just too costly within the North African nation.
Much like these world chains, her ambition is for Dawi to be a family identify that provides a constant customary of medical care at a value middle-class Egyptians can afford.
After leaving her position at Egyptian funds firm Fawry – the place she labored from 2008 till 2016 – Habib took a while out. She met numerous individuals for espresso to discover potential alternatives, although none of these discussions went anyplace.
Then, at some point, a good friend, Nader Eskandar, floated the thought of constructing a series of healthcare clinics. They each felt that Egypt’s healthcare system was deeply disorganised.
Egypt’s well being sector was break up between an under-resourced public system and a fragmented non-public one. Individuals with restricted means relied on public services, the place queues had been lengthy and infrastructure strained. Those that may afford non-public care – about half the inhabitants – encountered a special set of issues.
Normal practitioners had been scarce, leaving sufferers to diagnose themselves and select a specialist, usually with out realizing whether or not it was the suitable one for his or her situation. Medical information weren’t stored centrally; sufferers had been accountable for carrying their whole historical past from one physician to a different. If a brand new doctor questioned the accuracy of earlier exams, the affected person needed to repeat them, including additional value. Even those that may afford non-public care usually waited 4, 5, or six hours to see a health care provider. The consequence was inefficiency, overspending and a irritating expertise for sufferers.
However neither Habib nor Eskandar had any background in healthcare, and with no doctor they may not flip the issue that they had recognized right into a enterprise. The lacking piece arrived unexpectedly over a Christmas lunch. There, Habib met Dr Mairose Doss, a distant relative of her husband – a common practitioner with expertise in hospital administration. As Habib described the idea, Dr Doss instantly lit up. “I used to be simply chatting [to her] concerning the thought, and her eyes grew broad, and he or she cherished the thought,” Habib remembers. “We clicked when it comes to mindset and enthusiasm.”
Dr Doss left her job at a household clinic to assist set up Dawi Clinics, turning into the brand new firm’s chief working officer. Habib took on the position of chief govt.
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Dawi Clinics aimed to convey order to Egypt’s fragmented non-public healthcare system by means of an reasonably priced community of standardised clinics with set appointment occasions, common docs as the primary level of care, and medical information stored centrally throughout branches. If a affected person had an appointment at 15:15, the physician would see them at 15:15 – an unusual idea in Egypt on the time.
One of many first hurdles was regulatory. Egypt had no authorized framework for working a series of clinics. The founders spent months consulting attorneys, being advised repeatedly that it couldn’t be achieved, till they ultimately discovered a workaround. “We needed to arrange a medical firm and a administration firm and an asset administration firm and had a really convoluted company construction to have some correct authorized framework to work with,” Habib says. For a younger firm, it was a heavy administrative burden, however there was no different.
With the construction lastly in place, Habib and Dr Doss opened their first two branches. Beginning small proved helpful. “There was so much to study, so much to regulate and repair concerning the enterprise mannequin,” she says. Their preliminary plan positioned common practitioners (GPs) on the coronary heart of the Dawi Clinics mannequin, based mostly on the view that many routine circumstances didn’t require a specialist. However two obstacles emerged virtually instantly: there have been few GPs out there to rent, and sufferers had been accustomed to going straight to a specialist, no matter how minor the sickness is likely to be.
Dawi Clinics at the moment has 30 branches.
“The idea of being a GP doesn’t actually exist in Egypt,” Habib says. If a toddler had ear ache, mother and father wished the perfect ear, nostril and throat (ENT) physician on the town, not a household physician, even when a light an infection could possibly be handled cheaply and shortly with antibiotics as a substitute of seeing a specialist. The identical dynamic utilized on the docs’ aspect. Few wished to enter common follow as a result of specialist fields paid extra and had been in greater demand.
“Each on the provision aspect and on the demand aspect, this idea of imposing a GP because the gateway to different specialties, which is the proper factor to do from a medical perspective, was completely not possible to implement. So, after preventing with it for some time, we gave in,” Habib explains.
Ultimately, they stopped attempting to impose the GP-first method and commenced hiring extra specialists. That shift required important changes to their pricing and to the broader marketing strategy.
“If you do a marketing strategy on paper, it has completely nothing to do with what occurs on the bottom, regardless of how a lot analysis you do, and we had achieved loads of analysis,” Habib says.
In 2018, with 4 branches in operation, Dawi Clinics attracted its first institutional investor: the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund which Habib additionally labored with throughout her time at Fawry. Its funding allowed the corporate to proceed increasing its community of clinics.
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Convincing docs to affix Dawi was tough within the early days. The mannequin was new, Habib and Dr Doss had been largely unknown within the medical group, and having two ladies lead the enterprise was unconventional in Egypt. “The primary few branches had been very tough,” Habib says. “We employed whoever agreed to work with us, they usually weren’t all a great match when it comes to means of labor and tradition.” Because the clinics grew to become extra established, the crew was in a position to be extra selective.
As a result of the clinics serve the middle-income phase, Dawi has limits on how a lot it may pay its docs. Physicians with thriving non-public practices serving wealthier purchasers can earn extra. However Habib says there’s a massive group of docs who desire a secure earnings with out the burden of operating their very own follow – shopping for provides, managing an infection management, coaching nurses, coping with tax paperwork, and sustaining tools. For these docs, she says, Dawi removes a lot of the executive load.
She provides that Dawi additionally appeals to docs preferring working as a part of a crew slightly than operating a solo follow. “When you’re a dentist and you’ve got your individual follow, you’ll make more cash,” she says. “However you spend your whole profession alone in a room with a affected person that can’t even discuss again to you. It’s a really lonely profession.”
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In 2023, Dawi Clinics raised about $8 million in a spherical led by Al Ahly Capital Holding – the funding arm of the Nationwide Financial institution of Egypt – alongside its earlier backer, the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund. At that time, the corporate had 20 branches and employed greater than 260 docs.
Operating a community of dispersed clinics has proved demanding. Every website, Habib says, has to ship the identical requirements of hygiene, an infection management and affected person interplay. “Rollout is not only a matter of cash,” she says. “It’s a matter of getting all these institutionalised insurance policies and procedures and methods of doing issues, in order that you find yourself getting the identical high quality of service, whether or not you go to our Assiut department or our Shebeen El-Kom department.”
Expertise has helped them refine the mannequin. New branches now attain profitability extra shortly. “We now have a really clear kind of recipe for opening branches and bringing them right into a optimistic contribution margin individually,” she says.
Immediately, Dawi operates 30 retailers – half in Cairo, the remainder unfold throughout governorates across the nation. Habib doesn’t count on the corporate to wish additional exterior funding. “Our money stream could be very wholesome and that enables us to proceed our development extra organically.” She believes the Egyptian market may accommodate round 100 Dawi Clinics.
In September 2025, Habib handed the chief govt position to Dr Doss, who now oversees the corporate’s day-to-day operations. Habib has shifted her focus to development initiatives and longer-term technique.
