“If Uber was able to change the way people move from [one] point to [another] point, what is the one domain that deeply impacts people’s lives in our region and needs disrupting?”
This is the question that led to the birth of Cura, the app that tackles the issue of health care, and aims at connecting people to get medical advice from professional doctors, without actually having to go there.
Co-founded by Saudi entrepreneur Wael Kabli and his friend MohammedZekrallah, Cura is an app that allows a patient to browse through hundreds of doctors and consultants with different specializations. If a patient is suffering from pain in any part of their body, they can choose a doctor based on their credentials, experiences, customer reviews and colleagues recommendations, and then enter a secure and private consultation where they can send them pictures, videos, and even voice notes to better explain their case.
According to Zekrallah, Cura is a heavily technical product since it features real-time chatting, voice and video calling, and more. As the Chief Technology Officer, it took Zekrallah around 6-months of individual work to finish, which included iOS, Android, backend, and AWS cloud development. “During these 6-months we launched our pilot, validated our idea and on-boarded real verified doctors to use the platform and we started receiving continuous feedback and kept enhancing the product ever since,” he added.
When asked about the challenges he faced, Zekrallah mentioned that Cura has a fast growth but a very low app utilization, meaning there’s a low number of consultations. They managed to overcome this problem through their investment in in-app analytics, where they found a clear gap between the operations and the relationships with the doctors. The team worked on them one by one for a couple of days until they managed to increase the adoption rates and the app went viral through word of mouth.
Moreover, Zekrallah told us an interesting story that happened with one of the doctors and patients in Cura. A woman suffering from Thyroid disease recently got pregnant and was questioning whether her meds would affect the baby. She tried to book an appointment in real, but the appointment was scheduled for three-weeks ahead, so she decided on her own and stopped taking the meds. She then thought of using Cura, where she was connected with Dr Owais Al-Halabi, who immediately told her to resume her pills because if she had continued for a couple more days, she’d have had a miscarriage.
Zekrallah is looking forwards to expand Cura’s services in more countries in the region such as Egypt, Jordan and the rest of the GCC. They have also recently launched ‘Cura as a Service’ whereby the team provides technical telemedicine services and operations and sells them to hospitals and insurance companies.
Cura has also taken part at C5’s Cloud10 Scalerator program back in April, and they were one of the top 10 startups in the pitching round.
The app is available both on the Apple Store and Google Play for free.