The largest healthtech Series A in MENA will support the launch of telemedicine in the UAE

Dubai: 12 February 2020:   Okadoc, the leading instant doctor appointment booking platform, closed its $10 million Series A round, following a $2.3 million seed round in 2018. The latest fundraising round is the largest heathtech Series A in MENA. The announcement was made in Dubai today at the STEP Conference, the leading tech festival for emerging markets. 

A diversified mix of institutional and private investors participated in the Series A, including Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) and Ithmar Capital Partners.

With this investment, Okadoc will launch telemedicine, enabling doctors to offer remote virtual consultations to their patients. This upcoming service will greatly enhance the patient experience by offering much-needed flexibility and convenience for patients to see their own doctors through a video consultation for follow-up appointments, pre-consultations and second opinions. The offering will also greatly benefit underserved populations with limited access to healthcare. 

Okadoc has entered into a strategic partnership with Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC) and has further on-boarded some of the UAE’s leading healthcare providers, such as Medcare, Aster Hospitals, Emirates Healthcare Group, and more. Further, after this rapid expansion in the UAE during the last two years, Okadoc will also expand operations into Saudi Arabia and is planning to enter more GCC countries next year. 

In Indonesia, Okadoc has recently launched a tailored version of its platform to tackle local healthcare challenges in the country, where the company has strong roots since setting up an office in Jakarta in 2018. Okadoc has been operating the majority of its technology development from day one in Indonesia, where half of the team is located. 

Okadoc’s cloud-based platform is designed to help patients find a doctor according to various parameters including insurance network, location, specialty, language spoken, or gender. Patients can then view real-time doctor availabilities, instantly book appointments, receive reminders, reschedule, cancel or even request earlier availability. Okadoc is free for patients and available across www.okadoc.com or the app for iPhone and Android.

Okadoc also helps doctors, clinics, and hospitals reduce 'no-shows', optimize their bookings, reduce administrative costs, increase operational efficiency and attract and engage new patients.

Fodhil Benturquia, Founder & CEO of Okadoc, said: “Our mission at Okadoc is to build and deploy technologies to improve the healthcare experience for everyone involved. We are fixing the broken patient experience that exists today while at the same time improving operational efficiency for payors and providers.”  

He added: “Okadoc is the only platform in the region that is integrated with most of the international and local hospital information systems (HIS), covering over 60% of doctors in the UAE making us the only platform that can offer patients the access to doctor schedules in real-time, and to instantly book and manage their appointments. It has also allowed us to reduce no shows by up to 75%.”

“We launched our instant booking feature in the UAE a year ago, and in this short time we have managed to on-board over 1,000 bookable doctors from 70 specialties in healthcare facilities across all seven emirates,” said Benturquia.

“We wanted to continue this great momentum, expand in other markets and introduce new functions, so we felt that the time is right to raise more capital to enable us to do so,” he added.

Ray Dargham, CEO of STEP, said: “Congrats to the Okadoc team on such a monumental Series A funding round that will launch telemedicine across the UAE. This is a strong testament to the ambitious and driven start-up talent across the Middle East. As the home to the region’s top entrepreneurs, we are really thrilled to have this great news announced at STEP 2020.”

Founded in 2018 by Fodhil Benturquia, Okadoc aims to improve the healthcare experience by seamlessly connecting patients with healthcare providers and doctors. In 2019, Okadoc was named ‘Start-up of the Year’ by Arabian Business and ‘Healthcare Innovator of the Year’ at the Entrepreneur Magazine’s Agility Awards. Also last year, Okadoc was chosen to participate in Hub71's Incentive Program, a Mubadala-led initiative.