Pharmaceutical is considered tobe difficult industry for StartUps due to heavy CAPEX needed to set up R&D and manufacturing plant (minimum $10m for something of significant) with long gestation period of minimum 3-5 years until revenue starts and high risk due to strict regulatory requirements. However, it is also an industry where 20% EBITDA and 12x valuations are possible. This is an industry which will never go out of business be it recession or pandemic like COVID. But, this does not mean every company is successful. There are number of manufacturers and distributors going out of business every year. So, we had to find a model winning model.
What and Where?
Given our decade of experience in pharmaceutical in exports to emerging markets and Europe, we were very clear we wanted to play in medicines and in Emerging Markets and Europe. Question in front of us was to How?
Finding White Spaces ->
We did market research to identify white spaces. White spaces are spaces left open by pharma giants. There are ~3000+ relevant sizeable off patent molecules and 23,000+ SKUs plus every year 300+ new molecules are going to be patent expiry. It is impossible for one company to cover across all countries specially for generic player. We identified genericized product in large market would be still blockbuster without any competition in small market because those are irrelevant for large pharma giants. There are almost 300 molecules in <$50m market size bucket with only one competition in Europe majority of which are patent expired. Finally, we found the space to play “Low Competition Generic Products”
This fits our expertise too which is identifying “Country X Molecule” combination with limited competition and launching it through alliance partner. This hypothesis was backed by experience from Covid time when we were able to supply Remdesivir without any heavy marketing investments across 40+ countries.
Zenith word resonated with our efforts here to reach highest peak in industry in terms of quality, accessibility and affordability.
This is how idea of Zenith was born with a mission to make niche products more affordable and accessible to patients.
Our Vision: Establish fully integrated pharmaceutical company in 3-5 years with own R&D and Manufacturing setup
