Vulcan Augmetics

Here is the deep dark secret that most prosthetics companies wont tell you:
Making an affordable robotic prosthetic isnt actually that difficult.

The problem isn't technology (literally anyone can 3d print a prosthetic. It's not hard), the problem isn't affordability (or everyone would have cheap Chinese prosthetics already). Its distribution and maintenance at scale. The disabled don't need the latest and greatest tech. They need something that just WORKS, for them, right now, and that they can take care of themselves.

Vulcans CEO grew up next to the biggest disabled college in the UK. Most of his teenage friends were in wheelchairs and led full, amazing lives. And the technology to do this was not that complex. A couple of motors, some wheels, and a joystick. But it was hideously overpriced.

After graduating and moving to Vietnam, he observed that disabled people in developing nations have even fewer options and that all of the startups trying to solve this are approaching it as a design problem, not a systems problem.

So that's why Vulcan was created. To provide a platform to sell and distribute practical wearable technology in low infrastructure environments, and put control of their body back in the hands of the user. And if they don't have hands for us to put the control back into, we'll give them some.

we aim to make a difference, and you can too.

The assistive technology industry is broken.

It is inefficient, inaccessible, expansive, and impractical. It's not reaching 65% of its potential users.

There is no trusted central source of information for new amputees, people cannot access products, the ones they can access are expensive, the pricing is opaque and exploitative, and the products are designed to require constant maintenance from clinics requiring users to travel frequently.

This is why there are over 38 million amputees who have literally zero access to this technology, and why nearly 70% of users abandon their prosthetics.

Our solution, we make the product modular and digitize the process, turning prosthetics into an affordable, convenient consumer product.

Making it modular means it can click together as easily as lego, so if a part needs repair, replacement, or upgrading we can simply ship parts to the user's door and they can fit themselves. It also means clinics require less training to take care of users, and we can design a range of easily switched special attachments to help users get back into work.

We digitize by having the whole process online, from hospital recovery to rehabilitation to clinic visits to product maintenance to community. Instead of just building a product we are building an ecosystem that gives our users full control of the process and their body, and the information to make the choices that are best for them. We also use ML-powered software to read the user's biosignals and train their prosthetics to better respond to their body better over time, instead of having to adapt their body to their prosthetic (which is what happens now).

Our users can order our prosthetics by: 
1. Visiting our app
2. Ordering their customizable prosthetics
3. Get it delivered straight to their door.

We built products to scale to millions, not to show off our tech. We work intensely with our users and design according to their requests, for things they actually need. We recognize that a systemic industry problem needs more than a single shiny product to solve it, and we build complete systems to scale accordingly.

So we've built a platform, not just a single product, so we can integrate the whole recovery process and make sure our users get the tools and support they need from hospital to home.

Who are our competitors?

The Establishment: Ottobock, Ossur, Tehlin.

Large multinational medical device manufacturers. Ottobock did over a billion in revenue last year. They are primarily focused on developed markets, especially the west, where they have governmental and insurance base subsidies to sustain higher prices.

The Generics:

Unbranded mechanical and silicon prosthetics, low function but also much cheaper than high-end robotics. ($2,600 vs $50,000). They are more popular but limited functionality means they have higher rates of abandonment, especially non-functional silicon hands.

The Up and Coming: OpenBionics, Unlimited Tomorrows, Atom Touch

Startups focused on affordable high function hands. They make amazing products but they are still at least 10x our cost, and dependence on 3d printing as a core manufacturing technique (instead of supplementary) means scaling is a significant challenge. These companies tend to focus on making a single product (robotic prosthetic hands) affordable, which does not address systemic infrastructure and support issues, or have clearly defined roadmaps to extend to other products. With the exception of Unlimited Tomorrows, they also use standardized myo sensors and socket fits (Unlimited Tomorrows have their own system, which is highly effective but requires a lot of inbuilt sensors)

There are 57.7M amputees worldwide and 40M of them are in developing nations and mostly unserved. 

Instead of us going to go where people are already served, we are going to expand the entire market by focusing on developing nations. We have already done this in Vietnam. Our next target is India by the end of 2022.

What is your addressable market?

The global prosthetics market in 2026 is projected to be $12.3 billion USD. The wearable technology market will be worth $118 billion USD and the total physical disability market is over $800 billion.

Step one is just prosthetics, and we are serving the 65% of the population currently not in the market, meaning we expect to expand the market size.

Our revenue streams over the next 18 months will be as follows:

Our technology roadmap consists of hardware, software, and service offerings. 
We intend to leverage sensor platforms on affordable prosthetics from thousands of users to build the ultimate ML powered control system for wearable hardware, which can be extended into assistive tech, mobility aids, industrial exo suits, and or course AR. Meta have just released a suite of AR sofware directly based on prosthetics myo technology. We are going to approach it from the opposite direction, building amazing prosthetics software that can be applied to AR and wider markets. 
We do not see our users as objects of pity, we see them as tech pioneers driving the next generation of human-hardware development. 

With our current traction, we have 70 users and have generated $64,000 in revenue. We have 18 clinics in our distribution network and 3 patents. (1 assigned, 2 pending)  We have partnerships signed for financing (EasyGop), education (Funix) & CSR (Momo, DCI). 

We have conducted projects with the UNDP and some of Vietnams largest brands, such as The Coffee House and BitisHunter.

We developed our ML technology through a program with Qualcomm, and it works with both biosignals and visual recognition, and finally we were selected as a SXSW Innovation Award Medtech finalist.

We believe that the future of prosthetics lies not just in the product, but in making the entire experience convenient, comfortable, and smooth and something that works for our users where they are.

We want to invite you to join us in this movement to change the prosthetics industry on a global scale, make traumatic disability a temporary inconvenience, and give people back control of their own bodies.