WE-Hub startup SmartPharma on a growth path
Hyderabad: When Saketha Pingali walked into the office of WE-Hub in October 2019 she was struggling to build a team, get technical documentation for her product ready, and also facing issues with clients and investors. However, in just a year the young entrepreneur and co-founder of SmartPharma transformed her company with a new investment of Rs 2 crore, a new address to meet clients, and also recruiting talent with ease.
“When I saw the board of WE-Hub last year, we were in the team building and software documentation stage. However, by the time we got selected for the incubation programme, we started seeing a change in the mindset of our team and the seriousness of working for a new company had gone up. Not just this, we started holding client meetings in WE-Hub which provided legitimacy to our work and fast-tracked our product development. One of the biggest contributors for our investment to come through is because of the support we got from WE-Hub and the team,” says Pingali.
SmartPharma is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that digitises and automates the whole supply chain process for the pharmaceutical industry which includes inventory management, customer relationship management, and as it is cloud-based, it is more secure and safe. She started the company with two of her friends Bharath Kumar and Surya Megham and feels that being associated with a government-run incubator provides legitimacy to a new company and also is an added advantage to women entrepreneurs who have to face a host of societal pressures to succeed.
“The pharma sector is highly unorganised and also very close-knit. So, to break the barriers of the industry was difficult initially. However, once we associated ourselves with WE-Hub it has become easier for us to get clients and also hire new talent – who are initially apprehensive to join a startup. If we had not got WE-Hub and government’s support it would have taken us at least 2-3 years more to reach the stage that we have reached in the last one year,” she says.
Going ahead, the startup plans to get large pharma and healthcare enterprises on-board and plans to hire new talent for the technical team.
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