CEO interview: Homegrown clinic chain Dawi brings GPs to Egypt’s ailing healthcare sector

CEO interview: Homegrown clinic chain Dawi brings GPs to Egypt’s ailing healthcare sector

From a modest office in Cairo, Magda Habib, a seasoned female entrepreneur who cofounded two of Egypt’s publicly traded companies, runs Dawi Clinics, a chain of 16 polyclinics.

“Our vision is to become the preferred destination for all Egyptian families for all their outpatient healthcare needs,” Habib, Dawi’s CEO, told Zawya.

In 2017, Habib and cofounder Mairose Doss, a physician by profession, launched Dawi’s first two clinics in Cairo. Since then, the business has been growing at least twofold annually in terms of revenues and number of outlets. In 2022 alone, Dawi’s network of 230 doctors served a total of 100,000 patients across at least six Egyptian provinces, according to Habib.

“Clinics are quite fragmented in Egypt. They are based on the reputation of individual doctors and lack any corporate structure. Dawi comes in with this corporate structure that ensures quality control, [auditing] and standard operating procedures,” she said.

Through its model of integrated family clinics, Dawi seeks to make up for the lack of family doctors and general practitioners who would usually serve as the point of entry to a well-structured healthcare system.

“Egyptians are not familiar with the concept of a family doctor. They go to specialists for all medical complaints, and there