Born and raised in Tunisia, Ameni Mansouri spent the last ten years of her life in Paris, where she studied Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Engineering. She later went on to work for Sanofi Pasteur, a big pharmaceutical company. However, despite having a stable income, she never forgot her true passion: fashion. Ameni had a monthly budget for clothes shopping but claims she somehow always ended up with nothing to wear when in need of an outfit, which is how she became interested in apps specialising in clothing resale in France.
Upon returning to Tunisia, Ameni realised that nothing like this existed in the country, or anywhere else in the MENA region for that matter; there were Facebook groups where women could buy and sell used clothing, but there was no protection for buyers and sellers, because it all happened offline. That was when she had the idea to create a localised female-only fashion marketplace where women could make money selling new, self-made, pre-owned or unused clothes and accessories, and which provided a 100% secure way to sell these clothes. Along with her cofounders, Ghazi Ketata and Oussama Mahjoub, Ameni launched this platform, which they named Dabchy, in January 2016. Ameni, Oussama and Ghazi’s aim was to improve the link between women and fashion in the MENA region and make it more affordable for everyone and, in less than two years, they have acquired 240,000 users across three countries – Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. On top of this, they launched Android & iOS mobile applications for Dabchy, which offer a smooth social-network-like experience and enable users to communicate with one another and share their personal style identities. The users, who are referred to as ‘Dabchouchas’, can also like and comment on the content.
Ameni’s mentor, Luis Borges, is a mechanical engineer who spent six years in the automotive industry and moved to Berlin two years ago to pursue his master’s degree in International Business Management, focusing his thesis in the field of Corporate Entrepreneurship. Nowadays, he works full time in Zalando, Europe’s leading online fashion platform, helping intrapreneurs (the managers promoting innovative product development and marketing) to validate their products, services and ideas through an intrapreneurship programme; a perfect match for Ameni’s company! During Luis’ visit to Tunis, where he travelled in order to meet Ameni and visit her workplace, he mentored the Dabchy team and offered them new insights based on his own experiences.