The journey to become a multi-million-dollar business of a Vietnamese company

Starting as a small workshop with a capital of only VND 4.6 million and just more than 10 employees under the Department of Healthcare Service for Transport and Communication of Hanoi, after 45 years, Traphaco has now developed into a business that has a market capitalization of over VND 5,000 billion and is a Vietnamese pharmaceutical company that is considered highly attractive by investors.

Traditional fulcrum

Mrs. Vu Thi Thuan, Chairwoman of Traphaco, is now one of the "female generals" of the pharmaceutical industry.

As the company is now taking big steps towards the market top, it’s time to take a retrospective look at the journey of Traphaco, a completely domestic company in the pharmaceutical industry: from domestic capital, domestic manpower, domestic-market-oriented products to over 90% of raw materials of domestic origin. Mrs. Thuan said despite its modest size in the initial days, the company's success in fulfilling its mission during the first 27 years has created a strong foundation for the breakthrough development over the past 18 years.

"Understanding traditions drives us forwards. While the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and the digital age have made various changes to many areas, our tradition has encouraged Traphaco to adopt new technologies, too. 2018 is our year of breakthroughs," Mrs. Thuan said.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Tuyet, former Chairwoman of Traphaco, said that although the early days were very difficult, Traphaco founders started to think big and embrace the idea of going global.

In the 1990s, what worried Mrs. Tuyet and her colleagues was the capital for machine investments. However, by the late 1990s, Traphaco became the first plant in the North of Vietnam with production lines qualified for GMP standard and one of the six GMP pharmaceutical plants across the country.

Vietnamese medicine for Vietnamese people

After spending nearly half a century helping to take care of the health of Vietnamese people using medicine of herbal origins, Mrs. Tuyet, who has been retired for 10 years, is very pleased with her succeeding generation for having transformed Traphaco with new vision, new plants and technology (the latest update is the new pharmaceutical plant inaugurated on November 8, that was built with green technology to reduce ½ manpower and increase productivity by 3 times).

Traphaco now has nearly 1,000 employees, 4 subsidiaries including 2 distribution companies, and more than 26,000 retail pharmacies in all provinces; therefore, the distribution system of the company is considered the most powerful in the pharmaceutical industry.

"Traphaco's goal by 2020 is to become the No. 1 pharmaceutical company in terms of growth of revenue, profit and market capitalization, which is expected to reach  VND10 trillion and Traphaco also aims to achieve the gross revenue of VND 4,000 billion/year, profits of VND 500 billion/year; the technology of the company will meet the highest standards of the pharmaceutical industry in Vietnam"- Mr. Tran Tuc Ma, CEO of Traphaco talked about the company's goals.

According to Mr. Ma, Traphaco always emphasized the production of high quality medicine for Vietnamese people, with over 90% of raw materials are of domestic origins.

The value of Traphaco is increasingly confirmed when recently, two foreign investment funds have bought about 40% of the company's shares at the negotiated price higher than the market price. However, during the negotiation process, the priority of Traphaco's leaders was to maintain the salary and benefits for nearly 1,000 employees of the company.

Manpower is one of the core priorities in the sustainable development strategy that Traphaco's leaders have approved.

Therefore, when surveyed for the first time on happiness indexes conducted by Anphabe in September 2017, Traphaco presented a high results in which the level of happiness reaches 82.7%, higher than the average of the industry, 64.8% and the whole market, 63.1%.

Particularly, the emotional attachment is 87.3%, colleague attachment 90%, trust in the company’s reputation 91.8%, and trust in the company’s vision and strategies 91.8%.