Thami Mtshali is a seasoned and accomplished entrepreneur who holds an MSc in Chemical Engineering and spent the formative years of his career working in the Petrochemical industry. He is one of South Africa’s early pioneers of internet services who cofounded the network operator, WBS in 1998. The business later spawned IBurst SA as its subsidiary offering mobile broadband and was soon followed by Broadlink to provide fibre connectivity and internet security.

He points out that “South Africa’s health sector has a very good reputation globally stemming from 1967 when Chris Barnard famously performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant. Our doctors and nurses are well regarded globally and highly sought after in the UK and other developed countries. Along with the stigma of our discovery, the Omicron came and increased attention as the world tracked us daily to get clues on how the new variant behaved, the severity of its infection, recovery rates and the effectiveness of vaccines against it. This was a tacit acknowledgement that we have the required sophistication and systems to track and manage infections, providing information for others to model their responses. And indeed we led in relaxing lockdown and self-isolation requirements even while the infection rate was high, which was soon followed by the UK and the US.”

“There is a strong case for our country to focus on the healthcare sector as part of the solution to  economic growth. Medical tourism is a big industry globally and we can combine our vibrant tourism sector with health to grow it here. For example, we could be a leading destination for people in the cold northern hemisphere to recover from the lingering health problems that at times follow a Covid infection… what they term “long-covid.”

“You must understand that almost every opportunity arises from a problem, and the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. The world is faced with massive problems at present while here at home we are overwhelmed with problems of our own. But opportunities present themselves when we stop complaining, stop focusing on money, and instead invest ourselves into creating solutions. I developed Galela Oil in 2016, not as a business but for my personal use. My daughter and I suffer from acute ulcers which kept us in and out of hospital for about thirty days a year for more than five years. We were in severe pain that would be relieved only temporarily with medication, but the doctors could not give us a lasting solution. Eventually I could not tolerate it anymore and so I dusted my chemical engineering hat to see if I couldn’t make something. My training gave me a good understanding of chemical processes, extraction, distillation,  thermodynamics, etc.”

“Galela Oil is a natural product formed with plant and seed oil extracts that took numerous experiments to finally find the right combination and balance of natural oils infused in avocado and coconut oil. This infusion provides lipids that managed to give us significant relief. It was almost unbelievable; our monthly medical bills dropped from thirty thousand rand to less than eight. Because it is an all-natural product, members of my family and friends asked to try it out to treat various ailments and soon after that I was regularly filling buckets. Well, I’m a businessman so I didn’t need convincing to bottle and label it.” “I took it to the CSIR for confirmation of its active ingredients, we are registered with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market it in the USA, as a health supplement. Our first shipment was dispersed in January 2022, via online giant, Amazon.”

When asked as to why not just focus on the South African market for now instead of putting all his energy into the seemingly impossible task of breaking into the US market, he conceded that it is a mountain to climb, and the challenge drives him. Thami was following the process of registering with the local authorities, but an alternative solution arose with the FDA, which in fact set the pace for westernised countries. Having studied and worked in the US, Thami has a good understanding of the terrain. It is a huge market with an enormous health problem. There are going to be challenges along the way, obviously, but what sense is there in shying away from challenges? What sort of life is that?”    

GALELA OIL
 Tel: +27 11 100 0300
 Email: info@galela.com
 Website: www.galelas.com
 Address: 3012A William Nicol Drive, Bryanston Sandton, 2191

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