 Hello there, welcome back to wine in the morning, if it's Tuesday, it's entrepreneurship Tuesday. Our Y254 channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle. Ashira is where you can find me across all my social. In this particular session, we dive into an interview that looks at the health care industry suppliers, right? And instead of, I'm joined by David Osore, who is the CEO and owner of Feel and Anise Company, Limited. Thank you very much, David, for creating time to be with us this Tuesday. Nice to have you. You look dashing. Thank you. I try. Very much welcome. So what does Feel and Anise Company deal with? Feel and Anise Company. It's a company that was formed in 2011, primarily dealing with medical solutions within the medical, within the health care space. We did start supplying medical equipment to various hospitals within the country. And over time, we have started looking into the IT solution within the health care space in telemedicine, augmented or artificial intelligence solutions within the health care space, and also quality solutions within the health care space. So pretty much in a nutshell, we do medical equipment and IT solution within the health care space. OK. When starting off, what exactly did the company supply? And when did you guys start the company? We started the company while I was still in campus with two of my brothers. One is called Feel and one is called Noshigati. Eventually, they pursued other passions. So I was left in the company. But we started it all. You stayed with the baby? I stayed with the baby. But we did start the company while I was still in campus. And while initially we had other passions in regards to IT solutions, we found that there is a good issue within the medical space of supplying medical equipment. Around that time, there were many suppliers of medical equipment as they are now. And it was quite a journey. It was quite a journey. It was a learning process. It took us quite a number of years to learn the roots of the game. But here we are. Here we are. Your background is in finance. My background is in finance. Yes. So what prompted you to get into the supply business in the health sector? My business, my background is finance. What I did, I did become in management as an undergrad and I pursued logistics, masters in logistics in the master's level. And the logistic aspect of it, because medical equipment is mostly a logistic solution whereby you have to get products from all over the world, products that make sense, products that fit in the Kenyan market and then import the mean and then supply. So if you have a good fit of a good logistic company, a good service solution whereby you can service your goods that you bring them, you become marketable within the country. So pretty much that's how we figured out the logistic aspect. One of the partners was in the biomedical engineering side. So it was a good money. How much money did you spend on that? I spent on it. I spent on it. Nanny is almost a decade. Yeah, it's almost a decade. Have you ever been employed? No. I interned, but I haven't been employed. Did you always know that you don't want to get into employment? You want to get into something that you have started or the private sector? Yeah, I'd say during my internship, that's when I discovered that 9 to 5 is not my passion. That's when I delved in entrepreneurship. Because the limitations of being employed can't make your decisions. There's a direction that you want to go. And you're limited because there's a grand picture of the organisation. Maybe you have a different view. So that's when I decided that it's good if I do something for myself and I just have my own direction in life in regards to how I want to grow as a person. Okay, interesting. You know, for most young people who have just left campus, the mentality is always, get me a job. I've already interned, got my attachments, now I'm ready to get employed. How was your mindset at that particular time? Were you scared that if you get into this, you're going to work out? What was your mindset looking like? You know, I tend to believe that it's a personal and difficult choice to deal with entrepreneurship without even having a test of the employment side because the uncertainty is better there. You know, entrepreneurship is a slow gradient of getting to where you want to be. So you'd find that in the first few years, you'd find your peers or your colleagues are moving at a first pace and you're still trying to make sense of things. So if you don't keep focus of really what you want and where you're going for, you might get depressed. You might feel that maybe you made the choice. But understanding yourself and understanding what you want to do and what you want to be, it's something that I tend to believe it's a personal and individual commitment that every entrepreneurship needs to have it in him so that at least he can be able to succeed in this space. It's not quite an easy space to be in. So it's how you walk through the journey and figure yourself out through the journey. Alright, and you mentioned something which is quite important that you guys learned in the whole business, together with your brothers, just learning the ropes into the business. So how do you build capacity? Because I'm so sure you meet up with new situations. You don't know how to handle probably the current situation where you're facing in business. So how do you build capacity inside? Okay, building capacity is something that comes as you move along the business. Because healthcare space, I'd say, it involves a lot of capital input, especially. It involves a lot of labour input. It involves a lot of research. So if you understand that you can't get to five years in one year, you have to finish one year first. You have to have a grand plan of how you'll be able to incrementally acquire as good networks, incrementally give good products because we do understand the healthcare space in the sense that should you make a blender on one solution, it trickles down to the rest of the solutions. So you have to be very careful on how you acquire labour, how you acquire services, how you acquire partners. In the sense that if you are targeting a certain tier of healthcare space, bit tier one, tier two, tier three, you have to be able to model your company and grow according to the needs of that space. If you focus on a tier one market, let's say Nairobi Hospital, Gattus Hospital and the rest, you have to model your situation to fit that space. And also you have to be able to grow and employ people who will be able to cater to that market. So the capacity building is something that is gradual and something that you have to grow as the business grows. It's not something that will happen at an instant. So you have to understand what they do in the market and then you fit yourself based on the needs of the market. Alright, you mentioned Mata's pertaining capital. So how did you guys raise capital? And are we getting to where you guys get to? Who is your source? Where do you get all these resources? So I'm starting with capital. Capital initially it was mostly family and friends. But by most entrepreneurship institution or most entrepreneurs usually have a problem acquiring capital from established lenders, banks and the rest. So what I usually advise the entrepreneurs or people in the business space is that like we did, we started with family and gradual growth because what we understood is we don't have the security to get funding from the established lenders. So the first three years it was mostly family. You get a small interest here and there. And then from the third year going forward that's when now we became attractive to lenders such as venture capitalists, such as insurance guarantors and banks whereby we could be able to get into some programs like one with a backlist where they could fund without security for purchase of our products to our clients. Alright, for business startups, so for someone who's watching this conversation and they're at a point where they want to start their business. Apart from family and friends, what would be your other point or where to run to to get capital? Different institutions or different business are usually unique. You'd find like at this space of time IT are reasonably funded. There are hubs everywhere and an idea if it makes sense can easily get funded. But merchandise sort of business whereby you buy and sell, it's a bit hard. You need to have a track record. So other than it's very hard for institutions out there to be able to get funding for their institutions. But right now there is a big interest in SMEs that are growing up for institutions. I've seen the story that came up to the government initiative. There's also one institution called African Guarantee Fund. That guarantees startups. So you go to them through a lending partner, lending partner lending institutions that they have their partner with and they can able to guarantee you to get the money. That's just a way of helping SMEs unlock their potential. So we have such institutions that can be able to come in and just try and help institutions be able to access the much needed capital. But what I usually advise people, especially in the space of startups, don't rush for capital first. Don't rush for capital first. First of all, have a good working product. And once you have a good working product, the learning process takes one. Sometimes it takes one year, two years or three years, depending on the nature of the business that you are in. And then after that, the institutions will come in. And at what point would you advise someone to take up loans? Because right now, taking up loans is quite very easy, especially because we have our phones that can easily access to these credit accounts and everything. So at what particular point should one go for a loan? Again, loans is not a bad thing. As long as you have a good management policy around, around loans is something that you'd know. You should be able to see if I put this money in this, in this venture or if I take in money, is it making sense in the next one or two years or will I be able to pay it? Because there is usually an appetite of taking up loans. This is something that we learned the hard way because for us, it was learning through the process. You'd find you take a loan within a certain term, you'd find it hard to service the loan. So it really is with the availability of loans and accessibility of loans, it really needs the entrepreneur or the business owner to really do due diligence on why you need the loan and what makes, if it makes sense. It can make sense to date. It should, it makes sense in the next three years. So the right fit and the right place when you can get the loan, that's when you should be able to acquire a loan but not rush it to get it. Not for consumption. Yeah, not for consumption, definitely not for consumption. So what are the technology solutions that your company provides when it comes to the healthcare providers? Yes, so interestingly, we got into the technology solutions within the healthcare space around two years ago. We found that this is the space that the country is getting into as far as healthcare space is concerned, whereby we noticed that this limited, especially limited human capital in various aspects like serine radiology and telemedicine. So we got into that space two years ago and we do augmented intelligence, whereby we provide solutions whereby you can get into an X-ray or you can get into a MRI unit and with the aid of our system, the radiologist can be able to get results of what is bothering you or not within a space of three seconds or so. So that reduces time and we find that with the limited capital of labour within the space, it really makes a lot of sense within the country. And also within the telemedicine space, we found that especially with COVID around, we found that there's a lot of need for telemedicine within the healthcare space of Kenya, not just telemedicine, the one that we have right now in most hospitals whereby it's just video to video, but whereby it incorporates also the electronic management records of the hospital and you can be able to write a prescription within the telemedicine space. You can be able to do some inter-classics, do a consult, take a doctor to be able to take consult notes and also can be able to do remote monitoring for a patient at home and can be consulted from a remotive through the main hospital or at the comfort of the doctor's home. What is telemedicine? Telemedicine, it's a phenomenon that happened I started around 2002, I started gaining ground around 2002 and it's pretty much trying to get to the patient remotely or within what we call within provider to provider. Oh, the visual connection between the doctor and the patient. Not just the visual connection per se, but also be able to have remote patient monitoring. So it incorporates video, video consultation and remote patient monitoring. So a doctor from one and should be able to monitor you, see, can be able to measure your vital signs, can be able to hear your acoustics for the stethoscopes and also be able to do what you call a surgery proctor in whereby you can guide the other, you can be, let's say, in the United States of America and be able to guide other surgeons working within, let's say, Connecticut University. Interesting, very interesting. So that's a space that we are trying to shift to now. And it's very flexible considering we have patients who don't want to be in the hospital or can be in the hospital, especially during the time of COVID-19. Yes, especially around now when it comes to, if I give you an example, not so many patients would want to come in the hospital because of the risks, it's a high risk area. So they prefer, and most of them it's usually follow-up consultations so they can be able to be handled from home or even to a greater extent whereby we have a high capacity of the high concentration of patients in the hospital so there's no space. So other patients are told to stay at home. So what we usually provide that with one of our clients that we are partnering with right now, we are trying to set up a remote patient monitoring the COVID patients whereby all the vitals can be monitored to a central dashboard within the hospital through a gateway, be it a phone or a laptop. So that gateway can be able to send the vitals of the patients so the hospital can be able to monitor the patient and see the vitals of the patient if now the pulse oximetry is going up they can be able to call an ambulance and say we see that you need to be attended to by the hospital or if it goes well we see that the vitals are okay you can still continue staying at home. The world is a global village. It is a dream. So is telemedicine the future of healthcare? Definitely. Without a doubt telemedicine is the future of healthcare space in the aspect that as long as there's limitation of specialists you need telemedicine for the doctors to be able to reach as many people as possible because we have patients who need these solutions or who need these specialist solutions from the villages and you'd find a pediatrician is not available in the villages you'd find a cardiologist is not available in the villages so someone would have to come to Nairobi to be able to be attended to a cardiologist but now in the next two years in the next two or three years we're looking at a situation whereby a cardiologist would be in Nairobi and just tell the patient to go to the nearest clinic I should be able to attend to you there so once he gets to the clinic he connects to the medicine portal the local hospital has enough capacity to be able to take me by to the patients to do a lab test that might be required of a cardiologist and then the cardiologist will just come in for the advice, for the consult, for the prescription and what needs to be done next so we are looking at a situation whereby most patients don't need to come to Nairobi to seek attention and also worldwide whereby we'd find that very specialized very specialized practices can be attended to by doctors from outside the country and also partnering with between institutions can be done very well using telemedicine so definitely that's the next stage in the healthcare space alright, alright let's look at the business aspect of it when it comes to supply how well do you get your supplies as a business and probably at that you can speak to us about networking for the business of healthcare I'd say we deal around 15 countries we source from around 15 countries so the supply chain for healthcare space first of all you have to register your products with the Pharmacy Appraisals Board as medical devices they usually have a range of medical devices that needs to be registered type A, type 2 and type C type A, type B and C and then you get a permit importation permit from the government so whenever you bring your product or product is registered it's good and verified that it can be able to be supplied within the Kenya space so partnering partnering with institutions medical products around the world you can get them through exhibitions through your own research there are various researches there are various publications they are one called Medical Expo maybe you can be able to see a wide range of this information we can find it online you can find it online, Medical Expo it's an online exhibition you can see various manufacturers and then you do a due diligence how they compare within the market you can see the market capitation of GE, you can see the market capitation of most of these companies because most of them are listed and just see how credible they are and then you engage them you send them an email saying that you are interested in supplying their products and then if you do well you get exclusive distributorship for the region so what are the essential when it comes to starting a medical equipment supply business pretty much there are two ways of it there's a supply and there's a demand of it so the essential is first of all you need to identify which space you want to be because within the healthcare space we have different tiers, there's the lower tier there's the middle tier, the higher tier so once you establish the space you want to be in you need now to see which products because there are products for each tier there are products for lower tier there are very expensive products for higher tier so when you're in that space you know what space you want to be in that's where now you go now to the supply chain the supply aspect of it trying to look for products that fit into that market that would be acceptable within that market space and with that now we'll be able to identify like let's say for my first tier my client would be GATU my client would be an Nairobi hospital and the likes so if you're in that tier now the products that you're looking into are products that fit and that would be accepted within because with them they also have standards of what they'd want to consume as a hospital and how profitable is the supply business the journey of it is initially it was very profitable initially when we have very few players in the market it was quite profitable you could work with one hospital and make an estimate but over time with players coming in a lot of players coming in the margins have become a bit thin and the competition has become a bit hard so you have to do a lot of marketing to get your products out there you have to do a lot of exhibitions with the hospitals various exhibitions of let's say different in neurology you have to go to the exhibition so the marketing costs have become high the margins are really thin but it's still a prohibitive business so if you have the skill set of getting into the business because it's mostly a skill set you can't just wake up and say I want to supply medical equipment you have to understand medical equipment first so it's still a prohibitive entry which is a good thing for us because it takes a lot to learn it takes a lot to learn and be able to provide a few things within the healthcare space they still do okay and how when it comes to the aspect of healthcare providers and the people who want to purchase particular equipment so how can they ensure that a particular supplier is legit when it comes to doing their due diligence okay most of these products it's very rare for medical provider to bring in mandatory stuff because there's a whole process there's a whole government process in everything whereby for me let's say for me to bring a product in I have to have a certificate of conformity ensuring that it conforms with the various standards be it the Eastern and BTFDA standards so once it conforms with that standards that's when the medical the pharmacy at Poisons Board can give me a go ahead to be able to sell it within the country and since most of the products within the country within the healthcare space are from there's very little chance because we have limited entry points in the country and you really need to have the importation certificate it's very hard for someone to be able to supply things that might do harm to the patient or that's not conformed to the healthcare standards alright so I'm so sure there's so many innovative technology that's being actually being put in place to just enhance when it comes to equipment in the healthcare system what would be your advice when it comes to the government to ensuring that we have you know modernized equipment and many of them especially in the public hospitals I must give it I must give it to the government on how of let and give it how they're trying to ensure that technology is adopted within the country what mention in the University teaching and referral hospital they're setting up what you call medical hub whereby even local people can come in because we've always had a challenge of lack of entrepreneurship push within the healthcare space but you'd find if you have a hub people from different sectors would say someone from TV, someone from radiology, someone from a doctor can come in sit down and come up with a product so there is good and I'd really advise people to look out especially people who are within that space but they have ideas within the healthcare space to look out for the medical hub they have a very good innovation hub that is coming up we also have a good build that I think Honore Bosa Kati is coming up with, I hope it goes through very fast whereby it also tries and jump starts innovation within the country so as far as legislation and policy of innovation within the healthcare space, with the technology space of healthcare there is really good progress that we've seen in the last two years towards that end so it's almost it's nine years, almost a decade so what has been your marketing strategy just to break into a space whereby I'm so sure the other competitors went to the healthcare supply industry so what has been your marketing strategy now, uniquely so healthcare space is mostly sample based marketing it's sample based marketing and you get, you have a product because there exist products in the market already so you have to prove your product is better or it's better or equal to what's of on offer and if it's equal it's cheaper so you have to do what you call sample based marketing so you have to incur cost or buy samples having the users have a feel of it for one or two months if they like it and if they enjoy using it because you'd find within the healthcare space trying to shift users from one thing they have used for the last ten years it's a new thing it's quite hard so you have to give them time to get acquainted to it and then now the procurement process kicks in and once if it passes the the usability space and gets into the procurement side if the price makes sense the hospital usually jumps into it because at the end of the day for them it makes money so I woke up with financial lessons that you have learnt while in this particular business for that particular ten frame of nine years we've learnt a lot we've top three top three first of all we learn that there's always a right time to seek we were hoping maybe we got into it earlier because there's growth that the market is there so we weren't really eager to get external funding initially but when we started getting external funding that's when we started seeing growth in the industry and also what I'd advise maybe let's say entrepreneurs out there is they really need to be prudent in how they do their financials especially filing the tax compliant always be tax compliant even if you're not doing business just be tax compliant because most companies virtually all companies need a tax compliant certificate so if you have tax issues before you won't be able to be considered to perform in business so non-compliance really he does growth because maybe you don't want to go to Kemsah and apply for a tender but if you're not compliant you won't be able to be considered also audited accounts if you're not audited if you don't have an audited account most companies really need an audited account you might have the product but you don't have this thing so if you can't be able to do that you might have to who has a good study in corporate governance who can be able to guide you through in matters of corporate governance and just keeping your books in order having your financial stuff in order what are a couple of challenges that you're facing the challenges that I'm facing is I might say I'm in a business I still consider myself quite young within the business this is a business this is a business space that most people who are mature in age are in so whenever I come to a client and say I can do ABCD we look at me like credibility are you sure you can be able to put it off I have a challenge we have had a challenge to say people really not believe in us over for a very long time people not be able to despite having good referral sites referral people who can be able to say we can do this we have done this it was really hard at first just trying to buy people in because we are young to also we find that it's we find challenges of financial funding the people other people within the space they have sorted the need for financing since it's a high capital it's a high capital just growing up with the company and not being able to supply because you can be able to receive an order but you can't be able to supply because you have a backlog of self-payments here you don't have enough cash to purchase so those are the challenges that we really had but it's a journey and we are slowly getting into the radio let's look at the future the vision, how does the vision look like when it comes when it comes to Phil and Anist Company Phil and Anist in the next two years we will be the leading telemedicine provider in the country we will be the leading artificial intelligence solution provider within the country and within the region we are also looking into mentoring which we have already started mentoring people within the technology space just trying to bring them within the healthcare space and act as we want to act as as a linkage because that is something that is missing within the Kenya space so we want to have a linkage we want to be a link between the IT and the healthcare provider so that IT can be able to come within the healthcare space and provide solutions because that's what's happening with other countries in the next two years we believe with everything that we have planned we should be leading in those spaces there are plans already so we speak about mentorship so how can people reach out to you when matters pertaining mentorship in the area of technology the area of technology and healthcare and healthcare so how can people reach out to you guys you can reach out to us in our space of we have a Facebook page called Fill and Asked Company and also we do how you can call us on our company number that is 0718243185 0718243185 and also you can be able to get us an email at info at fillandst.co.ke okay kindly repeat social media handles Fill and Asked Company limited it's on Facebook and also you can send us an email at info at fillandst.co.ke alright thank you very much David Osore for creating time to be with us okay about matters pertaining healthcare supplies and how technology is actually involved thank you you're welcome Osore who is the CEO and owner Fill and Asked Company remember keep in touch with Fill and Asked Limited across all social media handles if you have any any question or want to keep the conversation going or if you want to be part of the the people who get mentored in this particular space of technology and healthcare so make sure don't touch that I'll be right back with so much right here on why in the morning if it's Tuesday remember it's the hashtag entrepreneurship Tuesday at Y254 channel as you can find us across all social media handles at Michelle as you can find me across all my social we'll be right back