Multi-tenant AI business operating system for South African SMEs — WhatsApp-native, white-labeled. Commerce, invoicing, documents/KB, project workspaces, email, finance & CRM. Supabase · Qdrant · OpenRouter. Built in Cape Town.
# Vula — AI that runs your business
> **An AI business operating system for South African SMEs.**
> Each business gets a WhatsApp-native AI team member — for customers *and* for the
> owner — plus a branded web dashboard that runs their day-to-day: orders, invoicing,
> bookkeeping, documents, projects and staff.
> ZAR-native · POPIA-compliant · local-first · white-labeled · built in Cape Town.
Vula is **one multi-tenant AI backend** serving many businesses. A tenant talks to Vula where
they already work — **WhatsApp** — and manages everything in a **branded portal** that looks like
*their* system ("Powered by Vula"). The same engine adapts to very different businesses:
- **Commerce tenants** (e.g. *Off the Hook*, a Cape Town seafood delivery): WhatsApp ordering,
Yoco payments, delivery scheduling, bookings, bank reconciliation, an owner who runs the whole
shop by chatting to the agent.
- **Professional/knowledge tenants** (e.g. *DIGG*, an architecture practice): document intelligence,
project workspaces, QS cost estimating, invoicing, finance reconciliation.
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## What Vula does
**Talk to it on WhatsApp — in your own language.** Every tenant gets their own WhatsApp number.
Customers order by text *or voice note* (transcribed, local-first Whisper); owners run the shop
("how much did we make today?", "mark order 142 dispatched"); professionals ask their knowledge
base. Vula replies in whichever South African language the person is using — English, Afrikaans,
isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho and more — mirrored automatically, with persistent per-conversation
memory. A **team inbox** lets staff take over a conversation, leave internal notes, tag, and use
canned replies, closing the gap vs a dedicated CS platform.
**The AI business assistant.** The owner doesn't use a dashboard to run day-to-day ops — they
just message the agent. A 22-tool conversational admin agent handles sales summaries, order
status, stock, invoices/quotes, expenses, products, bookings, subscriptio …