The story of Ma Baguette à Doha

It all started with a missed fireworks show.

One evening in Doha, from a balcony, the sky lit up: a beautiful fireworks display, just a few minutes away. We would have loved to be there. But the news had never reached us: you would have had to scroll every Instagram account in Qatar to catch it.

That evening raised a simple question: why does it take so much effort to know what is happening in your own city? La Quotidienne is the answer: every morning, Doha’s essentials in French, straight to WhatsApp. Word of mouth did the rest.

As it grew, we looked at what already existed for Doha’s French speakers. WhatsApp and Facebook groups were real gold mines, but information got lost as fast as it arrived: dozens of messages a day, hard to find your way around, and nothing sticks. La Quotidienne made the opposite choice, deliberately: a one-way channel, one edition a day, zero noise. Clarity as discipline.

We then wanted to go further, and not everything worked on the first try. An early community website was a hit at launch… then emptied out: nobody wants to keep coming back to a computer for that, and nothing brought people back. Rather than insisting, we took the lesson: the community lives on mobile. MyDoha was born, the app gathering all the city’s events. And this time, it stuck.

Today, Ma Baguette à Doha is the newsletter, the app, selected partners, and tools that are entirely free. And it is not over: a new application is coming in August or September, built for French speakers and, more broadly, for all of Doha’s expats. The direction is clear: building the hub for French-speaking expats in Qatar, with brand partnerships and exclusive member deals.