Team:NOFLS YZ/Entrepreneurship
Business Plan
By Counter Sugar Team
1.Abstract
When we think about deadly diseases, we often ignore T2MD2. However, T2MD2 has posed a great threat to our health. In fact, by the time people start paying attention, most of them have already progressed to cancer. In order to reduce the risk of harm caused by T2MD2, this project aims to build a platform to screen FXR antagonists that can help reduce blood glucose. Our business plan starts with an introduction to our project and team members, as well as our basic information, followed by our research methods, such as how we develop our markets and projects. The final part is a detailed analysis of execution, future management, marketing strategies, and business models.
2.Background and team introduction
Nowadays, the occurrence of T2DM2 is common. According to statistics, by 2017, the number of patients with T2DM2 worldwide had reached 425 million, including 144 million in China. In other words, on average, one in 10 Chinese people has type 2 diabetes. What's worse, type 2 diabetes is very harmful to the human body, such as significantly increasing the incidence of heart and cerebrovascular diseases. Given the seriousness of the situation, we are desperate to find a cure for the disease. After studying current treatments for type 2 diabetes, we found that most of them, like metformin, Rocco, Pico, and acarbose, have extremely severe side effects that impose financial burdens on families and society. As a result, we would like to develop a platform to screen for better drugs.
3.The research methods
3.1 Interviews with Experts
In order to move the project forward and make it more successful, we did several things. First, for more expertise, we asked Dr. Wu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. From our interview with her, we learned that it takes 10 to 15 years to develop a safe and reliable drug, which is a low-volume, high-cost project. If we want to go from experiment to the clinic, we need to have the basis of pharmacology, understand the mechanism of pharmacology as much as possible, and go through a lot of experiments. For experimental optimization, Dr. Wu proposes a multi-level analysis. The analysis was carried out gradually at the cellular animal level and as to whether our experiment has an illuminating effect on the manufacture of diabetes drugs, Dr. Wu believes that it does. However, considering the side effects and differences between mice and humans, it will take a long time to test whether our experiment will be marketed. At the moment, our goal is good, but a lot of experiments are needed to confirm it.
Second, we interviewed another expert, Dr. Shen. Dr. Shen pointed out that agonists have side effects, so anticoagulants are a better choice in the future. Before that, most of the treatment of diabetes drugs on the market have side effects, about whether our research will have a revelatory effect on drugs, Dr. Shen pointed out FXR antagonist can improve sugar dysplasia is put forward, this is my diabetes is another factor, so the Dr. Shen think that our society is a revelatory role for the drug on the market. And we will study some of the symptoms of diabetes cause research played a help except us, there are some people in, and we do the same study, but it is a long time, need 10 ~ 15 years to complete the final drug research questions about the marketization of FXR antagonist can, says Dr. Shen FXR antagonist can't marketization because is the most essential difference between medicines and health products, health care products to do the "medicine food homology", while FXR clean agent resistance is not required.
3.2 Survey & Questionnaire
Questionnaire we designed is to investigate the cognition of non-diabetic patients to diabetic people and the current conditions of diabetic patients. In this way, we can analyze and formulate the potential demand for future experiments on diabetes.The questionnaire adopts a double design and collects questions separately from diabetic and non-diabetic patients. The purpose of this move is to ensure that the answers collected in each questionnaire are within the scope of respondents' knowledge and life experience, so as to ensure the authenticity of the information and to understand the nature of the questions specifically. This questionnaire also adopts the method of anonymous online solicitation, so that the respondents can feel assured to give their true answers and avoid the influence of social pressure on the participants. Data collected is mainly focused on people aged from 14 to 50, and a total of 327 pieces of data have been collected. There were slightly more female respondents than male, but by comparison, there was no gender-related correlation between women's and men's answers, that is, the larger number of women did not have a significant impact on the survey results.
Result shows that a further 77.71% believed that the treatment of persistent diabetes was inadequate. At the end of the non-diabetic response, quite a few people only knew about insulin injection therapy.
For those who had diabetes showed that only 28.76% of patients had no impact on their lives. At the same time, about 70 percent said current diabetes medications must be used and purchased for a long period of time to be effective. Among all participants, 96.73% expressed a strong desire to see the development of new, more effective drugs.
The results from experimental data show that diabetes has reached a worrying level in today's society, but the national awareness of diabetes is still at a worrying level. Therefore, we need to formulate a reasonable science popularization plan to arouse the attention of the masses. Most people in society believe that diabetes is a disease that needs strong support from the national government. However, the current flow of drugs obviously cannot meet the expectations of the people, so the process of research on new drugs needs to be accelerated to try to get patients out of the misery as soon as possible.
4.Market analysis
Since more and more people start to pay attention to diabetes, they will also start to drink some low-sugar food. However, there is no clear evidence that controlling sugar intake is effective in preventing diabetes, so much more needs to be done. We would like to use the following marketing strategy to promote our product.
4.1 Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy we use is called the 4P strategy, which includes the product strategy, Pricing strategy, place strategy, and promotion strategy.
4.1.1 Product strategy
The use of FXR antagonist in the treatment of diabetes is a novel and not widely used method, there are no relevant drugs in the market.
4.1.2 Place strategy
For the sales of related products, we are mainly divided into direct marketing and indirect marketing.
Direct selling: because we are now in an information age, so the market is very diverse, we'll go and engineering probiotic intestinal bacteria in patients with chronic kidney disease need a bigger city brand promotion and sales, we also plan to patients with chronic in these cities to test our products, until it was proved to be stable, then we will widely throughout the country. In addition, we will also make use of network marketing, through the creation of our brand website, WeChat official account, Weibo and douyin accounts, to improve our brand image and establish public relations and to make the brand widely known and increase customers' interest in inquiring related products.
Indirect marketing: It is difficult to promote our products traditionally due to the lack of understanding of our products in the early market. Therefore, after the product is launched, we will use WeChat public account as the company's only promotion platform, and then we will cooperate with large pharmaceutical companies with a relatively mature market.
4.1.3 Promotion strategy
As to promotion strategy, we will actively participate in various social media send push relevant products and quotation, so we can get more exposure, the promotion of our products, at the beginning of the purchase of our products we will discount the price of related products exclusive free medical services and a few years, for example, buying our products provide medical services, we only charge related to drugs, medication guidance and early medical services are free of charge. In addition, we will also attend some seminars at home and abroad to get more contacts, exchanges, and learning.
4.1.4 Price Strategy
Price Strategy will mainly consider two aspects. One is based on the cost and ROI rate. If goes well, we would like to make the cost back within one year after the launch of our company. In the meantime, we will also continue monitoring the market and change our price in certain areas according to the customer needs, like in different tiers of cities.
4.2 SWOT Analysis
4.2.1 Strength
Our diabetes treatment is a completely new treatment method which is different from the traditional diabetes treatment. The new approach does away with the traditional treatment of suppressing blood sugar by taking drugs over a long period of time. In other words, the traditional treatment is only a temporary palliative. And we did it from a radical point of view. This is novel for the general public, as it not only addresses the side effects that the patient's body bears from taking the drug for a long period of time but also significantly reduces the patient's costs.
4.2.2 Weakness
Our method started with the antagonist of FXR. The previous experiment found significant inhibition of blood glucose by knockout FXR in experimental mice. The drugs can indeed be obtained in the later laboratory, but we can't combine them with food. If we push the drugs directly on the market, it's from a completely new perspective. This may not initially attract a large number of consumers and hold up in the market.
4.2.3 Opportunity
There is no drug like FXR on the market, and ours is the first. It will take a lot of market share if we push it in the market.
4.2.4 Threat
Although FXR is a new approach, science and technology are developing at a fast speed. We have to monitor the market and pay attention to other teams' research, as well as optimize our product.
5.Organizational structure
In order to make the operation of the company more orderly, the company has a general manager and several departments-Marketing and customer service department, finance Department, resources and design Department, and human resources Department. These departments have different responsibilities.
5.1 Marketing and Customer Service Department
This department is responsible for promoting the company's products, philosophy and mission, and finding new customers. It organizes all activities related to marketing and promotion and is responsible for attracting the attention of target customers to the business industry. Make sales plan and record customer information. This department supports customers to have a simple and enjoyable experience before and after purchasing and using products and services, thus retaining customers and growing the business. Provide customer service, commitment, and trust through email, the Web, SMS, and social media.
5.2 Finance Department
The department is responsible for ensuring the availability of funds, ensuring that the company has access to cash sustainably, and checking the intuition and carefully calculated judgment of employees. In order to make higher-level financial management decisions, the department needs to produce financial statements. It also requires careful recording of routine bookkeeping, such as bookkeeping and payroll. It also requires financial preparation
5.3 Research & Development Department
The department is responsible to develop and optimize our product , which is one of the core teams in our company.
6.Evaluation
Our ideal end product is a drug, not a health product. First of all, we need to do market research. This team is responsible for identifying the needs and gaps in the market to set a "direction" for all subsequent programs. There are about six to ten people in this group. R&D department is a major expense source for the company's entire finances because a successful drug always requires years of development and thousands of tests. The department needs a large amount of advanced testing equipment and essentials in a conventional laboratory. They also need raw materials for testing and manufacturing drugs. The group needs at least 12 people. The department has a budget of no less than $40,000 a month. This does not include the cost of buying advanced equipment. We can rent research equipment from other research centers. The average daily rent is about $750.) Finally, we need a promotion team (about 5 people) who will be responsible for promoting our final project to the market, including advertising, offline promotion and so on. The budget of our group is about 10,000 yuan per month. Our company's tax is flexible because it is closely related to sales. According to the 2020 tax policy for pharmaceutical companies, each company's tax revenue is about 11.7 percent of its sales.
The risk of our products mainly comes from the market and the government. First of all, the government may not approve of our products. There are many diabetes drugs on the market now, and there may be great resistance when our products are put on the market because the government is very cautious about all kinds of new drug products. To solve this problem, our company will conduct many different types of tests and send test results and samples to different authorized agencies to verify their security. Another risk comes from the market. Because this product is so special, people may not use our product correctly. In this case, we can use the product as a prescription drug, only with a doctor's permission, and carefully under the doctor's guidance.
7.Conclusion
With the development of society, people's living conditions are getting better and better. This not only brings convenience to people's life but also brings some bad effects, such as the high incidence of diabetes. This should be a cause for concern, even though there are many treatments available today. But instead of curing it, we're going to suppress it, and we're going to start with FXR to find a solution. This could lead not only to a breakthrough in curing diabetes but also to a significant reduction in the cost of drugs, so it is a strategy that has the best of both worlds.
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