The ambition for achieving excellence is what drives any company to zeniths. This excellence could encompass—but not limited to—delivering unparalleled service to its customers, innovating products that add value to the users, or prioritizing on saving the environment.
With excellence being at the crux of their mission, the companies featured in this edition titled, Saudi Arabia’s Most Admired Companies in 2021, exhibit true potential to spark a paradigm shift in the ways that industries and markets will function.
One prominent name among such companies is Jamjoom Pharma, a world-class research-driven and globally recognized leading pharmaceutical company. The company has, in a very short span of time, emerged as one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the Afrasian region.
Jamjoom Pharmaceuticals was established to provide high-quality healthcare and wellness products at competitive prices for consumers’ benefit. The company strives to set the highest quality standards in everything it does and continuously endeavor to make its name and image synonymous with quality and integrity.
The cornerstone of Jamjoom Pharma was laid on the philosophy of Think globally, act locally. The central idea revolves around learning new technologies, ideas, concepts, and models and making use of this knowledge to improve the company’s local capabilities, expertise, capacities, and skills to produce better product offerings.
The leadership team at Jamjoom Pharma believes that the primary responsibility of an organization is to create value for customers and stakeholders. In this sense, the company considers itself fortunate to have painstakingly built teams that are committed, result-oriented, and believe in the organization’s vision and mission.
“Our prime focus has been on building core manufacturing competencies to ensure that each Jamjoom Pharma product reflects world-class quality; these standards are expected to meet established international companies’ challenges. We attribute our remarkable success in the marketplace firstly to the world-class quality and efficacy of our products, comparable to the best in the industry and secondly to our people,” says Mr. Noor Sheriff, the Co-Founder and CEO.
Exemplary Expertise
The cofounder of Jamjoom Pharma and visionary leader Mr. Noor Sheriff is a seasoned authority on strategy, business development, and management, coupled with excellent leadership, communications, and teambuilding skills with over 50 years of experience.
Mr. Sheriff is a consistent demonstrator of adapting problem-solving techniques and high-performance modulators across multiple departments and markets. He has always had a keen interest and expertise in the pharma industry trajectory over the past five decades, allowing for a high proficiency in the sector.
Mr. Sheriff started his career in sales and marketing in the early ‘70s at Allergan. After moving through all the organizational hierarchy layers, he left Allergan but not before leading five successful years as Vice President/Managing Director of such a world-renowned organization.
In the year 2000, Mr. Sheriff helped establish the structure of Jamjoom Pharma. He has thus naturally amassed the credit for hiring the right team to carry out Jamjoom Pharma’s vision, which is now rated as the ‘fastest-growing and top-ranked pharmaceutical company’ in Saudi Arabia. Along with his team of dedicated members, he has ensured the formation of various operating committees and executive teams and their successful implementation.
Following are some highlights of his profound career at Jamjoom Pharma:
- Established Jamjoom Pharma from its conceptual stage; Hired the ‘right team’ to carry out the vision of Jamjoom Pharma.
- Leading cross-functional teams to plan, build, launch, and manage world class innovations.
- Managing over 30 countries across Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia.
- Overseeing various Operating Committees and Executive teams.
- Built the 1st soft gel facility in the country.
- Established a state-of-the-art R&D center with over 100 top class scientists, several PhD holders who have developed over 230 products (and over 100 are in the pipeline).
- Guided Jamjoom Pharma as a Specialty Product line company operating in JP Ophtha, JP Derma, JP GIT, JP Cardio-Vascular medicine, JP CNS, JP Nutra, adding over a tenfold capacity across many lines.
- Maintained a high standard of performance for the product line. In a concise period, three of our Specialty lines attained #1 rank as per IMS, and many of our products are among the Top 3 in the segment they operate.
- Mentored the team responsible for establishing Jamjoom Academy, an institute responsible for training and developing young Saudis in several functions of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
- Contracted joint venture relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
- Established a 100% owned pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Egypt.
Overcoming Adversities
The team at Jamjoom Pharma believes that COVID-19 has impacted the global economy like never before; the overall impact was crueler than anticipated. The consequence of this pandemic for some industries, especially airlines and hospitality, was catastrophic.
“Fortunately for the health care sector, the effect was not that significant, especially for the local manufacturer due to the inelastic demand. We have anticipated this as an opportunity. We knew that to capitalize on this opportunity, we must put ourselves in order, plan diligently and execute to perfection,” the team expressed.
Mr. Sheriff and his team also states that during the pandemic, pharmaceutical products’ imports had drastically reduced, giving local manufacturers an outside opportunity to replenish the market demand by locally manufactured products.
“This pandemic period, without a doubt, has been unlike any we have ever experienced, with challenges unlike any we have faced, but with perseverance, immaculate planning, and impeccable execution, we have managed to convert this challenge into an opportunity. We recorded the highest growth compared to the last five years, but we also managed to maintain a safe and secure environment for our employees to feel confident and give their 100% in such testing times,” the team added.
Jamjoom Pharma currently has an ongoing expansion in Egypt and Algeria and envisions these sites to be fully operational by the end of 2022. One of the significant elements of Jamjoom Pharma’s success is targeting the specialty line since its inception. “We will continue exploring them and discovering different specialty lines where we are currently not present,” Mr. Sheriff concluded.
Bequeathing Invaluable Wisdom
We asked Mr. Sheriff for his views on how the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data and machine learning have transformed the healthcare industry and what more could be expected in the near future, to which he said, “All three things mentioned above are in the early adoption phase, but I am sure they have a long way to go in the years to come. I am sure these technologies will become a necessity.”
“Whether from computer-aided drug designing to simple marketing and sales, or to know customer insight to fine-tune and develop product liking and market requirements, everywhere AI, big data, and machine learning will have a prominent & significant role to play. The concept of big data is not new. With the emergence of artificial intelligence, I am sure this big data will improve production efficiency, customer satisfaction and help bring down production costs in the health care industry,” he added.
Sharing his advice to the budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the healthcare space, Mr. Sheriff said, “I have always believed in aiming higher, setting standards that are above the mark. My goal has only been to try and bring out the best in every team member to define them, refine them, and be their best selves as individuals and professionals. I have lived my life by certain values and principles. As a ‘leader’ my role was to promote those very values instill them among many of my team members.”
“For new entrepreneurs, I will advise them to be confident and visualize the big picture of what they would like to achieve and remain focus. They should remain steadfast and not to give in to shortcuts when tested. I would strongly encourage them to select their team assiduously & diligently because, in the end, it is people that matter,” he adds.
Exhibiting Unparalleled Excellence
Following is Jamjoom Pharma’s performance as per the latest data available with IQVIA. IQVIA is a third-party data analyzer and a world leader in using data technology and advanced analytics. It has the expertise in helping customers drive healthcare.
As per IQVIA, Jamjoom has been recognized as the 3rd largest and one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical product manufacturers in Saudi Arabia. As per IQVIA, the company is number 2 prescribed company in Saudi Arabia.
Apart from this, during 2020, Frost & Sullivan, a business consulting firm involved in market research and analysis, recognizes Saudi Arabia-headquartered Jamjoom Pharmaceuticals with the 2020 KSA Company of the Year Award for its operational excellence and expanded product portfolio and footprint.
Additionally, during the recently concluded GCC BEST EMPLOYER BRAND AWARDS – 2020, organized by GCC Employer Branding Institute, Jamjoom Pharmaceutical company has won GCC’s Best Emerging Employer Brand Award and Dream Company to Work for – Pharmaceutical Sector.
