Rafarma Pharmaceuticals Inc (RAFA)

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Great article today on Ilya Shpurov from RAFA! WOW!:

The pharmaceutical business in Russia: the path of the entrepreneur Ilya Shpurov

An investment is an operation that, after careful analysis, assumes the preservation of fixed assets and a satisfactory return.

Benjamin Graham


Today, in the midst of the crisis caused by the pandemic, every entrepreneur asks many questions: are growth points possible in business? Are there any strategies for optimal investment in the face of falling demand in most markets? What markets or their segments can you develop now? what business strategy to choose?


We decided to get answers to the questions posed by analyzing the existing business strategies of Ilya Yuryevich Shpurov, an entrepreneur and investor operating in the field of pharmaceuticals and biotech. His uncharacteristic Russian scientific view of doing business and the international perspective of its development has had a significant impact on the evolution of projects in his portfolio. The business approach of an entrepreneur is not only to find, buy out and in the future build from scratch a company that is in production decline, but also to establish production, to develop it in crisis circumstances, thanks to the skillful crisis management.


But let's start in order. His path as an entrepreneur began in the distant 1990s, and the experience he has passed since then in the field of medical technology and pharmaceuticals makes it possible to judge the contribution to the development of this industry and the future of the bio-technology business, which he is engaged in today in Russia and abroad (USA, South Korea , Spain, Central Asia).


In the spirit of the late 80s, it was to commercialize everything around, and the emergence of the market for technological and later medical products in the post-Soviet space helped to combine the love of technical innovation. Becoming an entrepreneur, Shpurov worked in the M&A market in the 90s, providing management services for crisis enterprises, where he achieved some success and which he used as a source of capital for the future. Active operations on the market allowed him to acquire about 500 thousand square meters of real estate both in Moscow and in other cities of Russia, as well as a number of properties in Europe. This was the start for their own business. It was these resources that he began to invest in industrial enterprises in Russia, buying up hopelessly bankrupt industries and making them highly profitable in the future.



Thus, in 2003 the company OJSC "Slavich" was acquired www.slavich.ru in the city of Pereslavl, 4 hours from Moscow. The company was bought in a slump with a debt of about $ 30 million. It now has 7 factories producing photographic paper, photographic plates, microelectronic materials and a growing share of domestic production of flexible packaging materials with multicolor printing. In 2004, at the same place, near the factory base, the Pereslavsky GC Technopark was created, now it is the largest private institute of this kind in Russia in terms of area and number of residents (more than 200), which includes 4 km2 and 560 thousand meters of buildings.


Since 2009, efforts have been made to develop projects in the field of biotechnology "Slavich" has received an unprecedented patent for Russia for the cultivation of new organs inside a person - smooth muscle sphincters. More than 50 therapeutic interventions have been performed with good results of their transplantation into the body of a person who has worn out his own sphincters and needs to be replaced with a threat to life if there is none. Unfortunately, the change in the procedure for registering medical technologies made this project difficult to implement, and the concept of introducing such technologies was rethought.


Now all the efforts and significant investments of the company are directed to the B2B market in the production of medical substances. Their goal is to enter the world biotechnology market within the framework of projects that are being implemented in Pereslavl, Moscow and Kumertau, as well as at a technical site in the Moscow region (Dubna). In addition, one of the goals is to create the production of substances for pharmacology using biotechnological methods - working with colloidal chemistry technologies, the Slavich company implements meson spectroscopy technologies, designs a site for the production of watered films for these purposes and builds workshops for the production of sprays, production of anticancer substances, and also develops partnerships with the Bashkir Medical University and its research base, the Kulakov Research Institute, the IBC Research Institute and in various scientific research.


At the same time, in 2008, Shpurov, together with partners, invested in a large pharmaceutical plant OJSC Krasfarma http://kraspharma.ru in Krasnoyarsk, which at that time was also in a state of industrial default. Timely and correctly directed investments, energetic actions and a good team of its managers could achieve a result in which the plant moved from 63rd to 25th place among Russian manufacturers. New production lines for the production of drugs have been created, new lines of drugs are being developed, which are supplied to pharmacies of ordinary consumers every day. But, most importantly, Kraspharma is actively involved in research and development in the field of pharmacology.


Investment success does not depend on how much an investor knows, but on how realistic he or she is about the limits of his knowledge.

Warren Buffett


From 2010 to 2020, more than $ 70 million was spent on the reconstruction of the pharmaceutical group's enterprises. In 2015, he takes the next big step: acquiring Bebig LLC http://bebig.ru from RUSNANO and a group of private investors . The company has developed a number of innovative products that it produces at its industrial plant in Dubna (Moscow region) in the field of nuclear medicine, which Shpurov is a supporter of - generators, radio preparations and radio sources.



The company increased its capitalization 8 times from 10 million in 2015 to 80 in 2020... The main goal of the company's work, since its foundation in 2004, has been and remains the introduction of innovative methods of treating cancer diseases on the Russian and international markets. On the basis of "Bebig" Shpurov began to conduct his own scientific laboratory developments for the study and treatment of oncology. Today this company is the leader of the brachytherapy market in Russia, specifically, a high-tech method of treating prostate cancer. "Babyig" developed it the third in the world and the first in Russia. This technology is now installed in 28 medical institutions in Russia. The introduction of such innovative methods of treatment can significantly reduce mortality from cancer, apply more gentle methods of treating neoplasms to patients, which has already been proven in a number of patient treatments and scientific experiments.



The next priority task of the company is the development of the developed technology of microspheres for the treatment of liver cancer and a number of related oncological diseases http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200327000656 . An important area of ??business development for Shpurov is the development of partnerships with leading industry technology and scientific leaders. In his case, these are national research universities, including regional and production-related ones, the RUSNANO corporation and its subsidiaries, the leading company in the field of nuclear medicine Eckert & Ziegler https://radiopharma.com/ez-medical/ .



Investment success requires a smart plan and adherence to it. And the last one is the most difficult. Warren Buffett



Using the correctly chosen strategy of Shpurov's company from the beginning of 2020, that is, already during the crisis of the Coronovirus epidemic, they were able to reduce investments in real estate by 50 thousand meters, this made it possible to reduce the amount of consolidated debt to insignificant values, and provided desalinated liquidity reserves, which opened up opportunities for investing in dynamic sectors. As a result of such strategically correct decisions, the American company RAFARMA Pharmaceuticals, Inc http://rafarma.si was acquired , in which it was decided to invest all advanced research programs and thus focus it on the frontier of modern biomedical technologies https: // finance .yahoo.com / news / rafarma-adds-prestigious-board-chairman-133200529.html .



Consolidation of companies from Spain, Hong Kong, Russia and Uzbekistan into this holding, while simultaneously transferring technologies developed in his group, should create a powerful overpass for the development of promising innovations. It will be, firstly, about the technologies of nuclear medicine and theranostics, and secondly about the most advanced technologies for growing organs and tissues, which began at the end of the 10th years of this century, technologies for growing new organs directly in the patient's body were created, partly of which has been patented. Thirdly, this is the production of a number of drugs based on living organisms and bacteria, which are also needed as antiviral drugs against current and future epidemics.



In addition to the production of generics and innovative anti-cancer devices and drugs, the current pharmaceutical holding of Ilya Shpurov is already engaged in the following types of technological medical production: ultrapure materials for electronics, the nuclear industry and isotopes; nuclear emulsion for nuclear physics and muon radiography; membranes for hemosorption and purification of fluids, including blood and plasma; devices for plasma sampling and blood plasmapheresis.



The entrepreneur's related business interests represent the leading directions in the development of the medical business in Russia. For example, the use of the Internet of Things in medicine. The collection and processing of big data provides completely new opportunities for organizing the treatment of people today, evidence-based prediction of the results and budget of treatment, including individual choice of drugs and the successful treatment of the most serious disease in the world - cancer. All together this is a chance for completely new methods of promoting Shpurov's products. It is these views on the nature of the human community and sociality that give the chances of adapting business to the constantly changing landscape of economics and health care, which go hand in hand.



https://www.business-key.com/object/175734/