Workshop Periodicals-We Changed Our Name As Genveon Within The Scope Of Our New Vision
WORKSHOP MAGAZINE – DOĞA UĞUREL
ANSWERED BY: DR. ERHAN BAŞ – GENERAL MANAGER OF GENVEON PHARMACEUTICALS
QUESTIONS
Could you please briefly tell us about your professional background?
I’m a graduate of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine, and I completed my master’s degree at Boğaziçi University Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. Afterwards, I attended specialization programs which contribute to my academic development process. I continued to improve myself with Boğaziçi University Business Management Program and Marmara University Strategic Business Management Program, General Management at Harvard Business School, Senior Executive Program at London Business School, and Executive Development Program at Wharton Business School.
I started my professional career in 1990 in pharmaceutical industry as Product Manager and continued by serving as a manager at various levels. I served as General Manager of Bilim İlaç for many years. Today, I continue my professional career serving as General Manager of Genveon İlaç. I would like to underline my career in sports; I played basketball in the A Team of Beşiktaş Basketball as a professional licensed player from 1978 to 1984. I really think that it is very important to have sports in your life because it contributes to professional life and self-improvement so I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend all my young friends to keep sports as part of their lives. So far I’ve voluntarily taken on tasks in many nongovernmental organizations.
Could you give us some information about how the company became Genveon and how its organizational structure was restructured?
Growing in a short period of time with an assertive acceleration with its experienced human capital that improves itself and closely pursues innovations, Generica İlaç pays great attention to R&D. We contribute to health and life with our wide range of products consisting of original, equivalent, and OTC pharmaceutical products made available for the people in the acute and chronic markets.
In 2020, we’ve initiated a “transformation” movement as part of our new vision of supporting our objectives to touch the lives of more people and larger parts of society. As the first step of this transformational movement, we have changed our name to "Genveon". With this very strong name, we believe that Genveon, born from the combination of "Generica", our former name, and "Invention", today’s definition of innovation, supports our new vision that brings together innovation and the values we have built so far - experience, trust, high quality culture, and dynamism. Our logo has a brand-new identity in line with this change as well. The arrow in our new logo, pointing forward to the highest level, shows that Genveon’s aim in the healthcare industry is always the best and the ultimate for its country and humanity.
We’ve penetrated the production industry with our production facility that is among the best in its class internationally in terms of quality as a further step of change.
We’re proud to produce pharmaceutical products for 83 countries including Japan, Canada, South Korea, and many European countries in this facility.
How would you describe the corporate culture of Genveon?
A successful corporate culture is the most important factor in the company’s success. The essence of our corporate culture is to be “success-oriented”. The culture of success challenges our employees to do their best and become the most successful persons in their profession. This is an organization with an high-quality corporate culture that: combines experience with innovation; values research and learning; closely follows innovations and changes; is agile, and always focuses on human. This structure ensured that we accomplish many successful efforts in a short period of time. The fact that we’re going through an expedited cultural transformation in this process is beyond any doubt. We proceed towards a direction that supports passion in addition to our corporate culture, that focuses on changes, and the relation and collaboration among our employees.
In which fields does Genveon offer treatment solutions? What are your priorities?
We’ve determined our pharmaceutical product portfolio as value-added acute, chronic original, equivalent and OTC products. We are serving the pharmaceutical industry with 47 products and 89 forms in total. We offer pharmaceutical products for the fields of neurology, physiatry, otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose, throat), family medicine, internal diseases, pediatrics, physical rehabilitation, orthopedics, surgery, chest diseases, and gynecology. Our priority as part of our transformation movement is to penetrate the field of chronic diseases, a field which we currently do not serve, and increase our presence in the OTC market with value-added OTC products with our R&D studies.
Could you share the investments you’ve made recently and your growth objectives?
We can say that the acquisition of the production facility located in Gebze is at the top of the list. This facility is GMP Certified by 29 countries. It is licensed to make production for 123 countries with an annual production capacity of approximately 70 million units of packaging and 3 billion tablets. We’re actively exporting products to 83 countries including some of the leading developed countries such as Japan, Australia, Korea, Philippines, Brazil, Canada, Germany, and certain European countries. I’m proud to say that the facility has a sustainable and successful quality performance history certified by many health authorities.
We’ve integrated 300 employees working at the facility to Genveon family as a result of our investment. In other words, we’re providing employment for 850 people in total. We’re glad to contribute to the national ecosystem and industry by working with many suppliers. In addition to produce for the Turkish pharmaceutical market and many developed countries, we aim to turn our facility into a production base for many additional international companies as part of our medium-term objectives. We also aim to grow our export volume.
Improving the capacity of our R&D Center is among the top items of our agenda as well. We’ve made a major investment in the field of infrastructure, machinery, and equipment, and we continue to do so. We are eager to increase our new value-added product development rate for both our country and international markets.
I’m happy to share that in the long-term, we’re planning to build a new production facility, which our country needs, on the land where our current facility is located.
Could you please make an assessment about the contributions that localization and globalization can make in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry?
Localization is extremely important for our national economy and the development of the Turkish pharmaceutical industry as well. Increasing the number of products produced in the facilities located in our country, through localization, will contribute to the national economy by reducing healthcare expenses we pay for to the other countries, and also will also contribute to increasing employment and healthy development of our industry. As we produce with this domino power, we pay great attention to the growth of our third party business partners, as well as the companies in other industries, so that they strongly exist in the national ecosystem.
In respect of globalization, this is crystal clear that Turkish pharmaceutical industry aims to become a regional power with its current level. I believe we have a big advantage because the pharmaceutical industry in the neighboring countries, in MENA and CIS countries is still underdeveloped. Increased export volumes in our industry contribute to foreign currency inflow, develop R&D culture, and to transform facilities into production bases.
On the other hand, globalization will have a positive effect on many aspects such as; cooperation with many companies from various countries will increase; companies will enter into joint projects; innovation will rapidly develop; technology and know-how transfers will take place; and economic strengths of companies will increase.
What do you think shapes the leadership today? Could you please tell us about your leadership approach?
Currently the whole world is in need of a leadership that is judicious and effective, shows empathy, and has good communication skills. Unpredictability definitely affects personal and team motivation negatively. I believe that while a CEO or a General Manager has an attitude aiming for high business standards together with all executives of the top management, showing leadership that looks out for employee engagement and caring about a positive climate and making progress with a common language gained great importance.
It is extremely important for us to create policies that based on through a visionary coaching approach that brings people to the fore, supports talented employees, and ensures they do stay in the company. Competencies of future are changing now, and individuals who can utilize their analytic, social, and emotional IQ are already ahead in all industries. Through coaching, we also improve the rapid change created in this period. We have focused on; providing training to improve their leadership skills in their fields, boosting their courage, and preparing them to the working environment and digitalized life which will be shaped as part of the post crisis “new normal”. Moreover, as a company, we’ve strived to contribute to the process by taking measures that will keep our employees and their families healthy in this special period.
What kind of a year do you anticipate for the industry and Genveon in 2021?
We anticipate that 2021 will be a year in which the crisis will continue due to the pandemic. However, it is an extremely important year for our rapid change process in terms of our team, and we aim to manage the process by moving forward with a “healthy growth”.
Based on our forecast, we believe that 2021 will be a year in which we can offer integrated services, develop our technology infrastructure, make differences in the services offered, and reach new value-added products as soon as possible. Moreover, it will be a year in which we will aim to; penetrate the fields that we currently don’t serve, become a regional power by increasing our export volume with our production facility certified by many countries, and become a production base for many international companies. Thus in 2021, we will keep going to achieve these objectives.