Dr. Paul Kaumbutho
"I was looking at the destination. The end. I could tell where I wanted to be."
That's how Dr. Paul Kaumbutho explains the name Omega — chosen before the business even existed, when all he had was an idea, a dream, and no capital to make it happen.
In 1999, after two years of rejected proposals, a fallen-through deal in Arusha, and a brother who couldn't invest, Paul started small — a partitioned corner of another doctor's clinic on Loldati Avenue, paid for with KES 120,000 in personal savings. He kept his hospital job at first, seeing patients on his lunch break, until he realized the only way forward was to give it everything.
"Sitting in the clinic and waiting for patients wasn't working. We had to go to them."
So he did — partnering with churches and dioceses across the country, running eye camps at concessionary rates, driving from Sonyi to Voi to Meru to reach people who had eye problems but no idea where to find help. Within nine months, he was earning double what his old salary had paid.
Twenty-five years later, that same instinct — go to the people, don't wait for them to come to you — has grown into a network of roughly 30 branches across Kenya.
"No one believes in your idea more than yourself," Paul says. "You have to have self-belief — because an opportunity can come in front of you, but if you don't believe you can grasp it, you won't."
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