Doctolib wants to become Europe's biggest tech platform for doctors

French startup Doctolib has just raised €26 million ($28 million) to help it become the leading platform to help doctors manage appointments.

The funding round was led by the American investor Accel Partners and the French public investment bank Bpifrance. It follows a €18 million ($19.2 million) round in October 2015.

Accel Partners was also one of the leading investors in the French startup Blablacar

The platform, currently present in France and Germany, allows patients to book a doctor's appointment for free.

Doctors pay €109 ($117) a month to get access to the booking software and a range of services allowing them to manage all their patients and the communication between healthcare professionals.

Before he founded Doctolib, Stanislas Niox was a professional tennis player. He founded the company in 2013 after suffering a serious back injury and realizing it was difficult to quickly get an appointment that fit into doctors' busy calendars.

"We're now the leading player in our sector in Europe. It's quite rare that a French company is the market leader in Europe in a sector such as this one," said CEO Stanislas Niox.

The booking platform has tripled its activity compared to last year. Today it sees 6 million patients who use it every month. It has signed up 17,000 health care professionals as well as 35,000 healthcare establishments, which includes public and private hospitals.

"This fundraising round is essentially for two things: we want to grow our community of healthcare professionals and establishments and to continue to innovate on the software we provide to doctors and the services we provide to patients," Niox said.

The startup employs 300 people, 40 of those engineers. It plans to hire at least 150 more people by the end of the year, the majority of those being engineers and consultants in charge of implementing the platform for clients.

Doctolib said it's open to expansion to the United States but it wants to focus on its growth in France and Germany first.

The company has no plans to begin charging patients, instead sticking to its simple healthcare professional-facing product and strategy.

"We're not profitable and don't plan on being it in the coming months or year. We have a longterm project," Niox said, emphasizing the support of the French public investment bank Bpifrance, which he says has a long-term vision to invest in companies that are good for society and French business, rather than focusing on just focusing on companies that quickly turn a profit.