Mohamed Hafez is a fresh graduate from the Faculty of Pharmacy in 2019. Mohamed mentions that he had experience in the field of Supply Chain by working with his uncle in his enterprise by being responsible for communicating with the medicine stores and suppliers. Through this experience in addition to being a graduate from the faculty of pharmacy himself, he observed how the process of supplying pharmacies and getting the best prices is too complex and requires intensive communication between the different parties involved which he realized can be where his startup fits in the market which led him to found Pharmatech in late 2019. However, as Mohamed puts it, “Ideas are cheap” and he needed someone to help him with the tools necessary to bring those ideas to light.
Soon after he founded his startup, Mohamed was fortunate to join Tomooh’s training program which provided him with different informative sessions an array of topics including the business modeling sessions which he mentions ensured, along with other sessions, that he started applying his ideas in a “safe and planned way” following a structured methodology. Additionally, Mohamed realized that the program was very suitable for the early stage at which his startup was at and helped provide him with guidance to get his startup running progressively. Additionally, as Mohamed understood the stage where his startup was, he mentioned that he “needed someone to be with us at all time” which he found to be the case due to the mentorship aspects of the program and the constant follow-up from Etijah’s coordinators. Eventually, he was able to tailor his priorities and operations of his startup towards the trajectory he was guided to by the mentors and formed a solid plan for how to “add value to [his] idea”.
Mohamed insists that this was only one of the first steps he took after graduating and believes that it was a great beginning for his personal journey as he now plans for Pharmatech to be the “cure for the problem” caused by the challenges in supplying pharmacies and to expand his services and support to the medicine industry both within and outside of Egypt.