The journey to 2million Vulas!
⭐ 3 years to sell the idea. 8 years for the 1st million Vulas, 2 years for the 2nd million Vulas! Teamwork is the dream work. 💫
Words from our CEO and Founder, Dr William Mapham MBChB FCOphth: “Reflecting on Vula's journey... I first had the idea for creating Vula while volunteering in rural Swaziland in 2010. After moving back to the Eastern Cape, it took me 3 years of selling the idea on a powerpoint prezentations to anyone who would listen, with nothing to show for my efforts. Constantly hustling, Vula won the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Award in 2013 and this enabled Vula to launch on the app stores! Although I thought Vula was a brilliant idea, it took another year before it was useful in practise. Behaviour change was a greater challenge than building an app.
During 2015 I played the Goldfish song “Choose Your Own Adventure” on repeat, eventually having the guts to leave working as a doctor for 6 months to focus on getting Vula up and running. Going back to clinical practice and back to working part time on Vula, I scraped through with bits of funding, a big thank you to the DG Murray Trust! I decided that when Vula was ‘seeing’ more patients than I could in a day’s work as a doctor that I would work on Vula full time. We used to see 40 patients each per day in Swaziland in a paperless clinic that was optimised for scale.
Going full time at the end of 2017 enabled me to focus. In 2018, after successfully raising funding and getting support from the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, we reached a turning point. We brought the tech team in-house, welcomed full-time employees, and began making a much greater impact. Between 2018 and 2022, we expanded Vula’s reach to more specialties, responded swiftly to the needs of the COVID-19 pandemic, and celebrated our 1 millionth Vula (referral).
Since 2022, the momentum has only accelerated. With a dedicated team of passionate individuals, we’ve achieved an incredible milestone in 2024: surpassing 2 million Vulas (referrals) in under two years. Today, a referral is made through Vula every 45 seconds—a testament to the team’s hard work and the platform’s growing impact. Every team member brings a different set of skills and experiences and it is a special time at Vula.
This journey hasn’t been without its challenges. There have been sleepless nights, financial strain, and sacrifices—like selling our car to cover rent. These experiences, however, have only strengthened our resolve.
It’s important to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come. Vula started out in eye care. Today it is used in over 70 medical, surgical and allied health specialties. The dream is becoming a reality. Now it is time to dream bigger. What if Vula was used by 1 million health workers by September 2032!?”
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