Zzapp Malaria

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2021 malaria posed a threat to nearly half of the world's population, causing sickness to 249 million people and claiming 619,000 lives. Africa accounts for more than 95% of all malaria cases and deaths, with the remainder of cases occurring in India (2% of the global burden) and in various countries in South America and Asia. Malaria is the number one cause of death and disease in many developing countries, where pregnant women and children under the age of five are the groups most affected. In addition, it is responsible for the loss of millions of workdays and school days. It has been estimated that malaria severely impedes economic development, to the extent that countries affected by malaria have a per capita income only 30% as high as non-affected countries.

Currently, the most common methods for fighting malaria are insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), both of which have significantly decreased malaria cases in the last few decades, but whose effectiveness has been dwindling due to mosquito adaptation to outdoor biting and their growing resistance to the insecticides used in these methods, as well as limited uptake and compliance and other reasons. 

Decades ago, many countries eliminated it using an environmentally benign method known as larviciding, namely, treating the water bodies in which mosquitos breed. However, in order to achieve malaria eradication, it is necessary to find and treat a very high percentage of the millions of water bodies (in many cases, puddles) around people's houses. Studies have shown that even experienced fieldworkers miss about 40% of the water bodies in the areas they are assigned to search. More generally, carrying out large field operations presents significant planning and execution challenges.

We created an artificial intelligence-based mobile app for running large-scale and cost-effective larviciding operations. The system uses satellite imagery and data on climate and topography to tailor optimal strategies for any given location: the app recommends where to search for water bodies, what additional means to use (e.g., which houses to spray and where to place mosquito traps), and how to sequence the different stages of the operation. It then helps implement the selected strategy by allocating treatment areas to workers. It enables them, while in the field, to pinpoint the location of puddles and to easily report all relevant information. Data is uploaded automatically to a dashboard so that managers can monitor the operation in real time (see video of the app).  

We continue promoting our solution by further developing our technology and applying it in more places. The main technological developments that we are now undertaking include the development of features for automated task assignment, improved task reviewing by team leaders and a transportation optimization algorithm. These will reduce costs of fuel and non-productive hours, both of which are among the main cost drivers of operations, and the reason why operations are more costly in rural areas compared to urban areas. Future developments we have in mind include improved use of drones for water body mapping (and, perhaps, treatment), an app for freelance fieldworkers (who will operate similarly to Wolt couriers), and a digital integrated vector management (dIVM) system that will tailor the optimal mix of malaria interventions for each location. In addition to development of technology, we are expanding the scope of our activities in terms of both the size of the operations and the number of countries in which we are working.  

Malaria is almost exclusively a disease of the underprivileged. To begin with, it affects developing countries, almost all of which in Africa, and many of which with a large proportion of the population living in extreme poverty (i.e., on less than $1.90 per day). Within these countries, vulnerable populations are those disproportionately affected by the disease: children under the age of 5, pregnant women and–more than any other significant health issue–impoverished people. Not surprisingly, malaria is profoundly underfunded. According to the WHO, the annual resources needed in order to reach its malaria control milestones for 2025 were estimated at $6.8 billion in 2020. However, the actual funding was a mere $3.5 billion, and the funding gap is ever growing. Based on a Lancet article from 2016, the average expenditure of an African country on controlling malaria was $3 PPP. 

The flipside of this grim situation is that even incremental improvements result in multiple lives saved. Indeed, contributing to malaria prevention efforts results in one of the most lives saved per dollar donated. Our solution, which, as mentioned, has been shown to be twice as cost-effective as today's leading anti-malaria intervention, thus holds the potential of saving more than 140,000 lives annually even with existing funding. 

The benefits of fighting malaria extend beyond saving lives, since they also contribute to the improvement of education and economic conditions. When children suffer from malaria, they often miss school days, which hinders their educational progress (this is particularly true for girls, who are often required to stay home to take care of sick family members). By reducing the incidence of malaria, children can attend school more consistently and concentrate better in class, ultimately leading to better educational outcomes. In addition, the economic situation of affected communities improves as healthier individuals can work more efficiently, boosting productivity and overall economic growth. Furthermore, in the case of digitally managed field operations to combat malaria, there are additional benefits to the community. Not only do these operations support local labor, but they also promote the acquisition of digital skills. The use of modern technology in these operations helps empower local communities, fostering self-reliance and resilience, while simultaneously providing valuable tools and resources to improve the overall effectiveness of malaria prevention initiatives.

Zzapp, was founded in 2016 by Arnon Houri-Yafin after he spent three months in hospitals in India conducting research on a malaria blood test. Witnessing the devastating impact of the disease, Arnon decided to use technology not only to diagnose malaria but to eradicate it. Zzapp team members are highly skilled professionals that are deeply committed to the cause and possess years of field experience. Zzapp’s team members hold advanced degrees, including two PhDs, from prestigious universities such as the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Georgetown University, and the Hebrew University. With a wealth of experience in diverse fields ranging from operation management and data analysis to software development and community engagement, our team has received numerous academic excellence awards and grants. Several team members have either contracted malaria themselves or lost siblings to the illness.

Despite our extensive professional and personal experience, we acknowledge that effective and sustainable solutions require a community-driven approach. We therefore continuously gather feedback through formal and informal methods. Feedback collection, led by our implementation expert, Alexandra Wharton-Smith, starts during the 3-day training that we offer fieldworkers. Based on our experiences in these sessions, we have enhanced our system, guidance materials, and teaching methods. During operations, we encourage managers and fieldworkers to share comments and suggestions via a designated WhatsApp group. We also actively seek their input during field visits, casual conversations, and structured interviews and focus groups. Overall, we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both managers and workers. They have reported finding the app useful and even fun (similar to a scavenger hunt...). In some instances, workers voluntarily continued working after hours to complete their assigned "chunks," even after being assured that it was not expected of them. Many workers also uploaded photos of themselves standing next to water bodies they had identified, demonstrating a clear sense of pride in their accomplishments.

These are a few of the reviews that we received:

“Despite the technology’s sophistication, the app and the dashboard are very intuitive and user-friendly. In an operation in the Amhara region in 2019, we located all the water bodies, which is usually a great challenge. Fundamentally, the technology helped us in saving time and energy. It also helped us in prioritizing severely affected villages.” (Dr. Abebe Asale, the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology [ICIPE], Ethiopia, 2019
 "The app has come at the right time. The app comes in handy in terms of helping us map all the municipality and also find the breeding sites for treatment." (Kwame Desewu, entomologist, AngloGold Ashanti Malaria Control[AGAMal], Ghana, 2017).

Ethiopia, 2020 (Right: Dr. Abebe Asale, left: Arnon Houri-Yafin)

So far, we have implemented our system in six countries across sub-Saharan Africa, jointly covering more than 500,000 people. Furthermore, we have entered into agreements with two African governments to launch in the coming months operations across their countries jointly covering more than 5 million people. 

Over the years, we have partnered with other leading organizations in the field of malaria control, in both the public and private sectors. In Ghana, we collaborated with the AngloGold Ashanti Malaria Control (AGAMal) company to develop efficiency indicators for larviciding and house-spraying (see video). In Ethiopia and Kenya we worked with the highly regarded International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) to test our tools in a variety of environments. In Zanzibar, in a pilot funded by the Gates Foundation through the Innovation Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), we joint ventured with Aberystwyth University and the Zanzibar Ministry of Health to include drones in the detection of water bodies for larviciding. Finally, in Mozambique, we partnered with one of the world’s leading malaria NGOs, Goodbye Malaria, in an integrated operation combining larviciding and house spraying. 

As a Business-to-Government (B2G) company, we work with governments, but also with donors, NGOs, and policymakers, including the WHO. The involvement of multiple and varied stakeholders often results in a complex and extended sales cycle. We believe that Solve can help us surmount these challenges by facilitating vital partnerships to accelerate our efforts*, validate our business model's impact and sustainability, and ultimately broaden our solution's reach to more communities in need. In addition to addressing these technical and market barriers, we seek networking opportunities to assist in completing a funding round. We have secured a term sheet from an investor (who is actually not an impact investor), contingent on the involvement of another VC in the round. We are confident that Solve can aid in identifying and connecting us with a suitable investor (VC or angel) to participate in our funding round and further advance our mission.

* For example, we could make use of Solve's advisor, Eric Schmidt, to establish a connection with John Hanke, CEO of Niantic. Our goal is to pitch the concept of creating an open-access, gamified version of our app that would enable users to report the location of mosquito breeding sites through an augmented reality mobile game inspired by Pokémon GO (“Remember the Pokémon GO epidemic? All those people running around in the streets chasing virtual monsters? Now, imagine if they were chasing real monsters—the number one killers of humankind EVER. Introducing PuddlePredators, the game-changing app where players have fun while saving countless lives...”).

We are innovative in three areas: approach, functionality and technology.

Approach — today, the dominant paradigm in fighting malaria is controlling mosquito populations by using insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying. Our strategy aims at eradicating malaria by means of integrated, cost-effective and environmentally benign field operations. This approach is based on successful elimination operations from the past, enhanced by mathematical models we have developed.

Functionality — most field operations lack sufficient management; e.g., in larviciding operations, some areas might be scanned twice, while others are overlooked. In addition, data are typically collected manually (using pen and paper). As a result, many puddles are not treated, and much of the information is inaccurate, lost, or inaccessible. Our technology exploits one of the few advanced technologies widely available in underdeveloped areas: the mobile phone. Our app ensures thoroughness in real time by optimizing the allocation process of treatment areas, increasing the monitoring of progress, and automatically streaming reliable and easily accessible data.

Technology — our system uses a neural network to extract data from satellite imagery regarding the location of houses. Next, it analyzes topography, synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), and multispectral satellite imagery to create a heat map of water body probabilities. From there, it moves to an optimization model, combining house locations and water body probabilities, defining the areas to be scanned and dividing these areas into workable units. We also developed a spatial-agent-based malaria simulator that automatically optimizes overall intervention strategies (recommending, e.g., where to scan for water bodies, which houses to spray and where to deploy mosquito traps). Based on predicted effectiveness outcomes, the simulator recommends the specific strategy for each village. The mobile app then conveys the chosen strategy to the fieldworkers; it can also work offline, allowing team leaders to assign tasks and review results by using peer-to-peer connectivity even while in the field. Data obtained in the field is uploaded to the dashboard to provide summary reports to operations managers; to identify underperformance or other abnormalities; and to help formulate recommendations for ongoing and future operations.

Our innovativeness, as well as our ethical standards and potential for scale, were acknowledged by malaria researchers, AI experts and panels of judges from both the 5-year IBM Watson XPRIZE AI for Good and the Cisco Global Problem Solver competitions. In both cases, we were selected from thousands of applicants as the grand prize winners, being awarded $3M and $0.25M, respectively.

Our goal is to significantly scale up field operations and substantially reduce the incidence of malaria in African countries. We believe this to be a realistic, achievable goal based on historical precedents, our favorable performance metrics; extensive connections with key individuals, institutions and stakeholders in the malaria community; and our highly talented and deeply motivated team.

More concretely, our aims for the next year are to launch the aforementioned operations in two African countries, jointly covering more than 5 million people. In addition, we aim to reach advanced stages in preparation of launching projects in other locations; talks are already underway to pilot our technology in several other countries (for reasons of confidentiality, details will be provided privately upon request). 

We anticipate that, by 2028, we will have completed seven nationwide elimination operations and several dozen district and urban-level operations, altogether averting an estimated total of 23 million malaria cases and saving approximately 70,000 lives. By that time, we expect to have completed the development of our AI component for optimizing combinations of larviciding and adult mosquito control methods, with the aim of enabling nationwide elimination operations for an average annual cost of $3.50 PPP. This cost equals the current average expenditure of African countries on malaria – namely, countries will be eliminating malaria for what they are now spending on its control. From a governmental perspective, eliminating malaria will not only save many lives, but will also lead, according to an estimate of experts of economic development, to an annual GDP growth of 1.3%, with an estimated investment rate of return (IRR) greater than 500%.

Malaria is addressed in SDG 3.3, whose aim is: "By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases." The UN's indicator for this goal is "malaria incidence per 1,000 population." In addition to this indicator, we use several other indicators: (1) reduction of mosquito population (which is based on a comparison of catch results from mosquito traps before, during and after the operation); (2) reduction of mosquito larvae (which is based on a comparison of water body sampling results from mosquito breeding sites before, during and after the operation); and (3) cost PPP. 

Together, these indicators ensure that our activities are highly cost-effective in terms of lives saved per dollar. Indeed, our solution stands out even compared to anti-malaria interventions, which, as mentioned, are among the most cost-effective investments in terms of life saving per dollar. Stressing the importance of being impactful, we excel in the following aspects of impact: 

• Cost-effectiveness: as mentioned above, in urban areas, our solution is twice as cost-effective as the leading alternative. 

• Rigor: digitization enables us not only to achieve impactful results, but also to meticulously record them. Unlike other malaria interventions that typically measure the reduction in malaria cases and, in some cases, the reduction of adult mosquito population, we additionally measure the reduction in mosquito larvae. This contributes to the substantiation of our measurement of impact. 

• Replicability: digitization, along with the standardization of operation (i.e., the development of training materials and operational protocols) ensures replicability of results across various operations. 

• Ability to improve: the close monitoring of operations and the abundance of data collected throughout their execution enable us to detect the main cost-drivers and the domains in which improvement is necessary. 

• Scope: our operations have been not only improving in results, but also increasing in scope. Our aim is to launch, within 3 years, nationwide elimination operations, which will affect millions of people. Currently, malaria affects billions of people; an effective solution will be no less than revolutionary, on a world-scale level. 

Depth: The gains of large-scale prevention–let alone elimination–of malaria are immense. As a WHO report states, “eradicating malaria would have the greatest beneficial impact on the world’s most vulnerable populations.” Preventing malaria not only averts multiple cases of morbidity and mortality, but relieves communities of mourning the dead, attending to the sick and overcoming the long-lasting effects of illness (ranging from increased susceptibility to infection to cognitive impairment). Children will miss fewer school days and concentrate better in class. Stronger farmers will increase land productivity. The community as a whole will prosper. Economists estimate that each 10% reduction in malaria incidence is associated with an average rise of 0.3% in GDP per capita and faster GDP growth. In countries with the highest incidence rates, malaria elimination will lead to an increase in per capita income of nearly 20%.

Our primary goal is to achieve a significant reduction in malaria cases by properly detecting and treating a high proportion of water bodies as well as optimally applying additional methods (e.g., targeted IRS) at a minimal cost.

In the current state of affairs, we have developed a digital system, training materials, and operational protocols for directing and monitoring anti-malaria field operations. The solution has been successfully demonstrated in multiple, and the aim is to scale up to a national level. 

Key inputs for the project include funding for equipment, training, and larvicides, skilled personnel to develop the GPS-mobile app and train workers, and partnerships with local communities and health organizations to raise awareness and support for the project.

Activities involved in implementing the project include developing and testing the GPS-mobile app, developing monitoring and evaluation protocols, and creating community engagement protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

As a result of these activities, the outputs generated include a GPS-based mobile app that facilitates anti-malaria field operations, training protocols on properly detecting and treating water bodies, and an incentives and rewards program for workers who complete their tasks and adhere to the treatment schedule.

The anticipated outcomes are that workers will detect and properly treat a high proportion of water bodies, leading to a reduction in the mosquito population and a decrease in malaria morbidity and mortality. It is crucial that the workers are well-trained to scan areas accurately and identify water bodies, and that the treatment is effective in reducing malaria transmission.

Assumptions underpinning this Theory of Change are that the GPS-mobile app accurately tracks field workers' movements, the workers are well-trained and motivated, the treatment is effective in reducing malaria transmission, sufficient funding is available, and countries are interested in deploying operations that involve scanning and treating large areas.

Strategies to achieve the project's goals include developing and deploying a GPS-mobile app that accurately tracks field workers' movements, training workers on proper scanning techniques and water body identification, providing incentives and rewards for workers who complete their tasks and follow the treatment schedule, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment in reducing malaria transmission, and securing funding to provide equipment, training, and treatment supplies.

The indicators of projects’ success include the proportion of water bodies detected and treated, the number of workers completing their tasks and following the treatment schedule, and the reduction in malaria cases and deaths. The impact indicators include the reduction in larvae positivity rate, adult mosquito population size, and malaria transmission in the project area.

The core of our technology comprises an AI planning tool, a spatial-agent-based mosquito simulator, a mobile app and an online dashboard. First, our AI component extracts from satellite images the location of houses and demarcates the general area for the intervention. Then, integrating data on climate, topography and land use, it runs numerous scenarios in the simulator. Based on predicted effectiveness outcomes, it selects the specific strategy for each village, recommending where to scan for water bodies, which houses to spray, where to place mosquito traps and what implementation order to employ. The system assists with implementing the selected strategy using a GPS-based mobile app that allocates treatment areas to workers, monitors their location in the field to ensure they cover the entire area, and tracks schedules for water body treatment and other tasks. The app was designed to work in Africa’s field conditions: it has a low battery consumption, works well even on simple smartphones and can operate offline. Information from the fieldworkers, as well as that which has been obtained from drones, is automatically uploaded to the dashboard, allowing managers to monitor the operation in real time. The dashboard also produces issue-specific reports – for example, fieldworkers’ productivity or the correlation between water body type and positivity – that improve monitoring of the operation and facilitate post-operation analysis and lesson learning.

We have implemented our system across sub-Saharan Africa in operations of increasing scope and improved outcomes. Among these operations, is a small-scale trial of the mobile app conducted in Obuasi, Ghana in 2018, fieldworkers guided by the app reported 28% more water bodies compared to a control team that mapped the same area using traditional methods (results of this operation were presented in Rollback malaria's 9th Meeting of Larval Source Management Work Stream, Geneva, 2019). In another operation, funded by the Gates Foundation (through IVCC), we collaborated with Aberystwyth University in a larviciding operation involving drones in Zanzibar (results are being prepared for publication). We have also implemented our solution in additional successful operations in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Most notable, is a recent 8-month campaign in São Tomé and Príncipe, covering 240 square kilometers of both urban and rural areas, home to approximately 166,000 people. This operation resulted in a 74.9% reduction in the mosquito population and a 52.5% reduction in malaria cases, at an average cost of approximately $0.86 per person protected (PPP). The cost ranged from approximately $0.44 PPP in urban areas to $1.41 PPP in rural areas, suggesting that in urban and semi-urban areas, where 60% of Africa’s population lives, our solution is twice as cost-effective as today’s leading method, ITNs. An elaborate review of the operation’s results and findings appears in this article published in Malaria Journal.

Diversity serves as a catalyst for innovation. It generates multiple perspectives on issues and fosters the development of creative solutions. Moreover, the ability to understand and empathize with others enables better addressing of the needs of customers from various cultural backgrounds. And, simply, it helps everyone feel comfortable with who they are. As a company operating in diverse cultural settings, with solutions that significantly benefit from community engagement, it is only natural that our team reflects the advantages of diversity. Our team members represent diverse genders, sexual orientations, religions, religious observances, and nationalities. In this context, adopting a gender lens when addressing malaria is particularly important. Women are not only disproportionately affected by malaria (e.g., they face higher risks of mortality during pregnancy and often care for sick family members), but they also play a crucial role in malaria control efforts. Women make up 70% of the community health worker force and are instrumental in adopting malaria control practices. These practices range from ensuring that their children receive seasonal preventive medications and use bed nets, to seeking medical care at healthcare facilities when their children fall ill. It has been shown that gender integration improves malaria control. Acknowledging the importance of this perspective, we took part in writing the Gender & Malaria Community of Practice Advocacy Agenda (“Eradication Through Equity: An Advocacy Agenda for a Gender Transformative Approach to the Fight Against Malaria”). We also apply a hiring policy in which if one of two equally competent candidates is a woman, she will receive the position. Indeed, women have been holding leading positions in Zzapp with regards to AI (Lea Leiman [former employee]), policy (Wendy Singer) and operations (Alexandra Wharton-Smith). Gender equality extends beyond hiring and staffing; it also involves creating supportive working conditions. For example, when our employee once had a work-related trip to a field operation in West Africa, Zzapp covered the full costs of flights and accommodations for the baby and her nanny.

Our business model focuses on providing value to the populations we serve in terms of impact and revenue through comprehensive anti-malaria vector control and surveillance services. We tailor our solutions to each location's specific needs and budgets, offering services at a competitive cost while maintaining effectiveness and profitability. 

We provide our customers, which include governments, municipalities, local authorities, and implementing partners, with products and services that support the implementation of operations ranging from the municipal to the nationwide scale. Besides the software, we offer a wide gamut of services, including training, operational management, quality assurance, monitoring and community engagement. Our resources comprise digital technology, materials and equipment, logistical centers, offices,  entomological labs, human resources, data, and company know-how. 

The gains for citizens in affected countries are immense, as large-scale prevention or elimination of malaria can significantly improve public health, reduce morbidity and mortality, and contribute to economic growth. Implementing partners benefit from our AI-generated tailored strategies, automated cost estimation and budgeting, improved management, highly cost-effective outcomes, increased accountability, and post-analysis insights, addressing their main pain points in planning, execution, and results analysis. 

We establish customer relationships through various channels, such as conferences, embassies, direct engagement, and contact with funders like the Global Fund and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). Our pre-sales process involves analyzing customers' budgets and needs and tailoring solutions accordingly. We offer a range of sales options, including district pilots, nationwide elimination, surveillance, and additional services such as modeling and consultation. 

Our services are delivered to citizens in collaboration with governments, local/municipal authorities, and implementing partners. We generate revenue as a B2G company, charging quarterly fees based on the number of licensed workers involved in an operation and the amount and level of services we provide. Our cost-effective solutions enable us to offer competitive pricing to our customers.

Ultimately, our goal is to achieve financial sustainability through a revenue stream from paying customers. Our primary service, accounting for 95% of revenues until EOY 2026 and 81% of gross profit, is nationwide malaria elimination operations—a unique offering in the market. Additional services include district control for low-burden countries, urban larviciding for comprehensive city water body coverage, and future platforms to combat mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika.

Our nationwide malaria elimination operations will typically begin with an eight-month, single-district paid pilot to showcase the effectiveness of our method within the client's local context. The pilot helps us tailor our system and methods to the country's specific ecosystem and society, facilitates government decision-making and bidding processes, and aids in obtaining loans from the World Bank. Following a successful pilot, we plan a three-year, two-stage nationwide campaign: a first-year "blanket phase" and a two-year "targeted phase." The final cost and structure depend on factors such as area size, population, and climate. Our implementing partners will be existing companies and NGOs experienced in large-scale public health operations, with access to rural resources, but not necessarily experienced in malaria-specific challenges. We will collaborate with these partners on the operational aspects of the on-the-ground operation. Our responsibilities include procurement, importation of goods, lab services, worker evaluations, training, storage, and transportation. The partners will source field workers and vehicles and help adapt our standard operating procedures to local conditions and culture. We will be solely responsible for planning, producing baseline epidemiological and entomological reports, and designing and implementing the operation. 

Based on our experience and mathematical models, we estimate that a typical 3-year nationwide elimination operation will cost the government an average annual $3.33 PPP, from which we will deliver immediate annual governmental cost savings of $1.67 PPP and major additional long-term cost savings. We will form a joint venture together with a selected implementing partner that will manage the whole sum ($300M in the case of a typical 30M population country), with which we will hire labor and transportation (70% of cost), buy aerial imagery and insecticides, run labs, and cover all the other operation costs. We will actively manage all the operational aspects of the operation. For this service, our gross profit will be $0.43 PPP or $39M (13% of the operation's total 3-year cost; according to service providers with whom we spoke, including companies and NGOs, the typical gross profit of service-givers for World Bank-funded projects is 25% of the project’s total expenditure. We aim for gross profit of between only 7% and 17% depending on the type of service and program complexity working in close concert with profit-sharing local implementation partners). 

Besides revenue from customers, our financial sustainability strategy involves pursuing prizes and grants (outlined in the next section). In addition, as mentioned, we have already received a term sheet from a venture capitalist for an investment round and are seeking to complete the round with another investor.

So far, our efforts to achieve financial sustainability have been met with positive outcomes, as evidenced by various grants, loans, investments, and awards that we have received over the years. In 2018, we were awarded a $0.08M non-dilutive grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation via the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC). A year later, in 2019, we received a $0.18M loan from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA), which also recognized us as an exemplary startup. Between 2016 and 2019, our parent company, Sight Diagnostics LTD, invested a total of $0.36M in equity. In 2021, we won $3.015M in non-dilutive prize money from the IBM Watson XPRIZE AI for Good competition and an additional $0.25M from the Cisco Global Problem Solver challenge. In 2022, we received a $0.3M grant investment from the Future Fund Regranting Program. We are currently in the process of completing an investment round to further support our financial sustainability efforts. Recently, we have secured a number of paying customers, which further contributes to our financial sustainability. For example, in one of these countries, we completed a pilot operation in the capital that led to the government's submission of a funding proposal for an operation in all of the country's district capitals (in which more than five million people live). However, due to confidentiality restrictions, we are unable to disclose specific information about these customers publicly.