INTERVIEW


Having been awarded an OBE last year, few would blame Nik Kotecha for reflecting back 27 years to a time that must have seemed a world away from being named in the Queen’s birthday honours list. Honoured for services to entrepreneurship, innovation in pharmaceutical services and philanthropy, the recognition was the culmination of nearly three decades of success and hard work. However his journey to becoming one of the region’s


most respected business people had altogether more humble beginnings. “It all started with a very poor upbringing, having arrived


in the UK as a refugee from Uganda in 1972,” explains Nik. “My formative years were spent in Leicester, where I was


fortunate to be the recipient of a council grant, enabling me to pursue higher education options. This enabled me to read medicinal chemistry at Newcastle University and, upon completion of my degree, I furthered my academic development, completing a PhD in drug discovery before moving to Cambridge University to conduct further research in this area.” Following Cambridge, Nik began to put his educational


background in medicinal research to use, working for high profile pharmaceutical companies before quickly realising there was a potential gap in the market. “I commenced my professional career in the big pharmaceutical companies – Roche Pharmaceuticals and Smithkline Beecham, which is now GlaxoSmithKline. Drug discovery was my overarching focus and it was in 1991 that I realised there was a great requirement and demand for high quality medicines in developing countries. “That concept came from my wife and myself in our


garage. We knew a lot of the medicines prominent in developing countries at the time were substandard. These medicines were entering the market on a large scale and people were not being treated at the level they should be. “We felt a small niche could be created whereby for a


population of, say, three million, maybe 300,000 people would pay that higher price and buy medicines from the UK because of our high standards. That’s really how the Morningside Pharmaceuticals’ international business started.” Yet there remained a lot of work to do to make that


vision a reality, especially given that international trade would be the sole focus – a challenge for an established company, let alone a start-up operating out of a bespoke office created from a garage. “We anticipated, hopefully, creating additional revenue to


pay bills, while I did my day job. There was no immediate expectation that the venture would be such a commercial success,” explains Nik. “We targeted Commonwealth countries - the likes of


Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and some of the African continent nations such as Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya - because we identified these countries as having an inherent understanding of British standards more than some of the other developing countries as there was already a British presence in these countries. “The whole business of international trade for us is built


on high UK quality standards. Our Ministry of Health, MHRA, along with the US Food and Drug Administration, is the most respected in the world, so they know that if the product is registered in England then it is a good quality product.” Initially an on-the-side venture, it became clear the


demand for Morningside’s services would require the fledgling business to become a full-time operation – with the international market at its heart. “We would contact embassies all over the world – of course there were no emails in those days,” says Nik.


As well as its success overseas, Morningside is now firmly established in the UK market


“We would request, for example, a comprehensive list of


companies that imported medicines into Georgetown, Guyana. We’d obtain the list, ring the agents and attempt to initiate a business relationship. “We began by processing what we referred to as


weekend orders. We’d receive an order on a Monday from Guyana, collect the products from the pharmacies we knew in Leicester and air freight them out on a Saturday morning to Georgetown. That carried on for around three or four years, building a network with developing countries and distributing to them.” While most would look to become established before


exploring overseas opportunities, the opposite was the case for Morningside. It’s a model, though, that fitted perfectly into the company’s ethos. “That’s where we saw the opportunities,” explains Nik. “We started the business as an export company and then


progressed into the UK market, which is very different to the way most companies begin. In those days, the number of people applying such a strategy to their business was minimal. The internet wasn’t around and the sources and communications we had in the UK were superior to what most people had access to. We found very quickly that these countries were willing to pay in advance so there were no credit terms or similar issues. We were able to build up cashflow to keep the business growing. “There were always complexities in getting stock from


one place to another as well as the documentation involved but we worked with strong freight agents who helped us learn and we started growing very, very quickly.” While the growth experienced by Morningside – which


would go on to receive a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade in 2012 – was welcomed, it left Nik with a strategic decision to make, given the business’s operations were gaining traction in the UK. “The first twelve years were focused purely on


international. Then, 15 years ago, we took the strategic decision to target the UK market and that’s when we began the significant step change of developing our own products. Now, we have around 170 licenced drugs in the UK, which is significant. “As the UK market started getting greater for us we had


to consolidate. We had a minimum spend in a country and if it wasn’t offering enough value it didn’t make business sense for us to be there. The regulations, registration process, intellectual property protection – all of that is far more serious today so it’s important to look at every market carefully and assess risk versus reward. We’ve reined it in but we’re much stronger and more influential in those markets that we’re in.”


‘The whole business of international trade for us is built on UK quality standards. Our Ministry of Health is, along with the US Food and Drug Administration, the most respected in the world’


business network February 2018 39


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72