Founded by Hocine Sidi-Said and Alhadi Alwazir, KELIX bio is a buy-and-build specialty generic business focused on emerging markets and designed to compete through innovation and cost leadership. With 30 years in the industry and having served as CEO in multiple countries including Indonesia, India, and Jordan, Hocine Sidi-Said has been recognised by CEO Monthly as CEO of the Year 2021 – The United Arab Emirates, so we take a closer look at his career and the company.
KELIX bio brings high-quality specialty products at affordable prices to emerging markets of those who could not historically afford them. The company’s investors currently include Development Partners International (DPI), CDC Group, the UK’s publicly owned impact investor, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
From its core values of integrity, performance, quality, and care, KELIX bio takes guidance and inspiration to help it maintain value for all stakeholders – patients, healthcare professionals, payors, and ultimately its shareholders. It has many diverse clients, reaching out to governments through its participation in tenders, as well as hospitals, and partnering closely with healthcare professionals and caregivers at large. It differentiates itself from competitors through the uncompromising quality of its products and through its cost leadership, and it also takes pride in materially expanding the pool of cancer patients that can now have access to oncology drugs at affordable prices.
Company CEO, Hocine Sidi-Said brings to KELIX bio an extensive 30 years’ experience across multiple jurisdictions managing P&Ls and complex organisations. He said, “From these past experiences, I have understood the nobleness of our work, the merits of resilience and the need to keep the patients at the centre of everything we do.”
Speaking about his team and recruiting new members, Hocine said, “I am privileged to be working with a group of very talented individuals. They come from various parts of the world, and all contribute to the diversity, the creativity, and the energy of our company. When hiring talent, we look for alignment of purpose and the person’s disposition to embrace our values. I often say, ‘There is no place for cynicism at KELIX bio.’ What we do is challenging, yet the satisfaction and the sense of accomplishment that emanate from our work are unparalleled.”
With the challenges (cost leadership and quality) inherent to KELIX bio’s industry, specialty generics, being few, they are critical to its success. These stem from its mission to bring high-quality products at affordable prices to the market.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 has brought to the public and policy makers interesting learnings about the specialty generics industry. First and foremost, it has shed a strong light on how dependent we all are on medication, how complex our supply chain is, and how dominant India and China have become in critical segments of the value chain. Furthermore, KELIX bio has exacerbated the desire of governments to ‘re-localise’ the production of certain pharmaceuticals without due consideration for economic viability, choices of products, and the availability of an indigenous talent pool.
KELIX bio is now looking to continue acquiring businesses in the jurisdictions, the technology and therapy areas that are of interest to it. It will likely announce a number of deals in the next months that will be highly accretive to the business and will strengthen its ability to deliver on the promise it makes to regulators, payers and ultimately the patients it serves.
