ENTREPRENEURSHIP

• Executive Summary
• Team
• Market
  
  
  • Environmental analysis
  • Problem Identification (Market needs)
  • Segmentation
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Competitor analysis
  • Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
• Possibility & Scalability
• Cost structure
• Funding
• Success Metrics
• Funding milestones
• Impact
• Appendix

Executive Summary

We are adopting a B2B business model targeting physicians in military hospitals and directly distributing to them. Our target market strategy: concentrated marketing. Our unique value proposition: Our therapy is specifically designed & tailored for the treatment of COVID-19; It is not a repurposed drug similar to indirect competitors available in the market.

Team

We are adopting a B2B business model targeting physicians in military hospitals and directly distributing to them. Our target market strategy: concentrated marketing. Our unique value proposition: Our therapy is specifically designed & tailored for the treatment of COVID-19; It is not a repurposed drug similar to indirect competitors available in the market.

Market

Environmental Analysis

Macroeconomic:

Political & Legal:

Recently, the relevant Egyptian Health authorities backed by the government pushed for a clinical research management bill that legalizes and controls the implementation of clinical trials in the country (Gomaa, 2020). This shows an increasing interest on the government’s end in supporting the research and development of novel therapeutics created within the country. The country’s interest in COVID-19 therapeutics is also evident in the promptness of action in securing a production license of Remdesivir in June just weeks after the drug received its Emergency Usage Authorization from the FDA (Al Tawy, 2020). However, support for genetic engineering endeavors is not yet available as a bill for the regulation of GE research remains in parliament debate (Badr, 2015).

Economic:

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a growing investment in therapeutic and diagnostic R&D by Egyptian funding bodies (ex: Academy of Scientific Research and Technology- ASRT Call 2020). Recently, we witnessed the launch of the largest research project in Egyptian history aiming to fully sequence the Egyptian genome with a whopping budget of 1 billion Egyptian pounds led by the Egyptian center for Research and Regenerative Medicine and guided by the ASRT (ياسين, 2020). This we believe will strongly support our cause as the first Egyptian developer and manufacturer of a SynBio-based therapy for such a heavy health burden.

Technological:

There is not an already existing infrastructure for a product like ours. Research facilities are mostly purely academic, while production facilities mainly focus on producing drugs and compounds under license without R&D. There is a strong focus related to teaching biotechnology and related techniques in universities, but with little real-world implementation. An unseized opportunity exists in connecting the dots by calling for collaborations between academia and industry. Further, as a startup, we do not have an already supported and fully functioning infrastructure (biological factory, bioreactor machine etc.).

Socio-cultural:

The expectation is that the social environment in Egypt will not be receptive to GMO products upon release. We may face some resistance. In 2013 for instance, protests were held in front of the Ministry of Agriculture to oppose the use of GMO crops as there was a perception that they cause cancer (Sadek, 2014). There is clearly a certain associated stigma with the public’s perception regarding GMOs resulting from a lack of awareness about what the term actually means and negative connotations associated with DNA manipulation.

Microeconomic:

Consumers:

Our consumers are B2B markets, specifically Egyptian hospitals. We plan to expand to international markets in the future.

Marketing Intermediaries:

No marketing intermediaries as we will be directly distributing to the hospitals.

Competitors:

There is no evidence of any direct competition in the Egyptian market, which is an advantage. This is viewed as an opportunity for our business as this environment perfectly sets the scene for the release of our product.

Problem Identification

The lack of a specific and efficient treatment option for SARS-CoV-2. Over 37 M cases have been diagnosed worldwide and over 1 M deaths have occured as of October 12th 2020. Generally, the current treatment protocol is conservative and non-specific and even using non-specific treatments, there are no effective therapies currently in the market approved by the FDA. Further, there is no evidence that scientific R&D for a COVID therapeutic is even taking place in the African region.

Segmentation

i. Market Segmentation:

Following a brief analysis of the surrounding environment and the identification of a problem, we wanted to develop a solution that would address the issue. We wanted to develop a therapeutic that could help solve the problem of the COVID-19 pandemic, but we first needed to conduct a market segmentation to identify the needs of the various segments and accordingly identify our target market. Our product follows a B2B model, so we started by segmenting the market into governmental and non-governmental entities as a first step (diagram below).

ii. Segmentation of hospitals in Egypt:

We chose to distribute to hospitals since we value equity and fairness and we hope that our product will eventually become available and accessible to everyone regardless of socioeconomic class. So, now we knew that we wanted to target Egyptian hospitals, but we had to narrow this down to a more specific segment. Based on this, we segmented Egyptian hospitals in order to narrow down to the most suitable target market for our product.

iii. Target Market:

Based on an analysis of these hospitals’ firmographics, behaviors, and needs during segmentation, we have come to identify that we primarily want to target military hospitals during the first rollout phase of our drug. Our decision to select this particular segment to begin with was based on a host of reasons.

First, Military hospitals have the lowest capacity out of all hospitals, which although may appear at first glance to be a disadvantage since the market size we will be targeting will be relatively small compared to if we were to target other types of hospitals like higher education hospitals, this is not the case. The low capacity is actually a benefit to us as a new startup since our production capacity will be limited during the product’s introduction phase, and we will also not have the technological capacity at this point to benefit from economies of scale. Another important reason we decided to go after this segment in particular, and this is arguably the most critical factor in our decision, is that we realize the level of power that Military hospitals have on influencing the decisions of other types of hospitals. This means that although the segment is small, there is higher potential for segment growth. Finally, military hospitals market themselves as quality sensitive, and since our end goal is to be the most efficient treatment on the market, this is the most relevant segment for us to go after. Once we have captured the Military hospitals as a segment, we will follow this by other rollout phases during the growth and maturation phases of our product targeting MHE and then MOH hospitals as per market segmentation.

As discussed, we will only be targeting the segment of military hospitals during the first rollout phase of our drug following a concentrated target market strategy. Since our product is a therapy, it is to a large extent standardized and will not necessarily be tailored differently to meet the needs of various segments during later rollout phases. Thus, it will likely follow an undifferentiated target market strategy distributing to hospitals all around Egypt once we gain our primary segment’s trust and loyalty and become more established in the market. We will utilize connections with Health authorities to market our product directly to hospitals and penetrate our market segments accordingly.

Stakeholder mapping

Onion model:

i. Product: SynBio-based therapy for COVID-19

ii. System: Patients

iii. Containing system: Hospitals and physicians

iv. Wider Environment: Ministries and governing bodies



Stakeholder importance & Influence:

In mapping out our stakeholders, we managed to identify which ones are most worthy of our attention and which garner the least importance and influence. According to our analysis, the most relevant stakeholders for us to focus on (both high importance and high influence) are universities and research centers as those may help us in getting approvals during our clinical trial phases and authoritative bodies like the Egyptian drug authority that will either approve or deny our request to bring our product to the market. Government hospitals, specifically military hospitals, and the physicians working in those hospitals also top the list as highly relevant stakeholders. They are highly influential since they are the ones who will be prescribing our therapy to patients and also extremely important as they are our primary distribution channel.

The most important stakeholders for us who have a low influence in the market are our patients as well as NGOs and private hospitals. Patients are our most important stakeholders as they are the ones who will be receiving treatment and NGOs and private hospitals can help us distribute our therapeutic. However, despite their high level of importance, both have a low influence in the market. In other words, patients will not be directly purchasing the therapy from us; we are targeting physicians in a hospital setting, and NGOs and private hospitals are not the most influential organizations in our market- the most influential are the military hospitals as discussed.

The most influential stakeholders with low importance are the public along with media and news. They are influential because both affect public opinion regarding our therapeutic and in Egypt generally, there is not much public approval for genetic modification. However, those stakeholders are considered of low importance for two reasons: we are not aiming to satisfy their needs (they are not our patients) and they are also not our distributors. So, they are highly influential stakeholders, but with low importance when it comes to making product related decisions.

Of course, our least relevant stakeholders are the health insurance companies as they have both low importance since these are not the ones we aim to tailor the product for as well as low influence since they are not influential like the publics or other media outlets.