Bargara may be a small seaside community but it's home to a dentistry training business making global waves with students in 55 countries and teachers in about 40.
Bargara dentist Lincoln Harris has taken the world by storm with RipeGlobal leading the way in cloud delivered procedural dentistry training.
RipeGlobal launched in mid-2020 and uses a technology platform to connect students and teachers, delivering hands-on training right around the world.
With 15 years of dental educational training under his belt, Dr Linc is passionate about sharing his extensive knowledge and skills from the seaside community in regional Queensland.
“Most dentist in the world can’t afford the type of education that I deliver and that I consume,” Dr Linc said.
“There are huge barriers, and so RipeGlobal was started purely to remove barriers from dental education.
“So that more people could access better quality education – no matter their nation, their race, their sex, their religion and their wealth.”
The ‘ripe' in RipeGlobal is an acronym of restorative, implant, practice, excellence, and Dr Linc said it was the world’s leading cloud delivered procedural training business for dentist.
“Our whole goal is to make education more accessible, more inclusive, more effective and obviously provide greater social connection and support for our students,” he said.
Dr Linc said if he had lived in a metropolitan region, he would not have had to take the time to learn procedures that he now teaches to hundreds of other dentists from around the globe.
“Bargara is crucial to what we do,” he said.
“If I lived in Brisbane, I would never have had to learn many of the procedures that I have had to learn.
“Over time, being in Bargara has forced me to learn complex, multidisciplinary dentistry, and so, because I have had to learn it – I’ve then begun to teach it.
“I’ve been involved in social media for dentist for 15 years and we have 150,000 dentist that follow our groups.”
Dr Linc said RipeGlobal offered high-quality lectures and bootcamp style cloud-based hands-on learning to participants online.
“Last year RipeGlobal designed and manufactured simulation kits, which are shipped to students all around the world,” he said.
“This then allows the dental students or dentist to jump online, and take part in the hands-on education, while reducing the cost dramatically.”
Dr Linc said the cost was reduced by up to 76 per cent, and it also benefited the environment as it reduced carbon emissions.
“On top of that per student we save about 50 tonnes of carbon per course,” he said.
“That will become economic benefit over time.”
In the next 12 months, Dr Linc expects RipeGlobal to continue to grow as fast as it did in the first year, and he thanked the local community for its support.
“Another aspect of the Bundaberg Region is that people here are so supportive,” he said.
“Two of our largest investors are here, and literally we have well over $1 million of backing just from local people.
“That support from local people is just unbelievable, if we were in a bigger city, I think it would be more difficult to get the initial – as the initial start is by far the hardest.
“The things we are doing, you can’t copy someone because no one has ever done it before, we are the first and still the only people running courses of this type 12 months on.”
Last month RipeGlobal won Business of the Year Award at the Bundaberg Chamber of Commerce's Business Excellence Awards, which has helped spread the word about the growing business.
“It has been hugely helpful because we need so many people in marketing, finance, operations and assistants,” he said.
“Those awards have helped us to get people to start applying for jobs so that’s been really, really rewarding in so many ways.”
