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Senior lecturer in business at De Montfort, Robert Webber, said: "This is in honour of Dr. Patel's many achievements in business, nationally and internationally. It is a great pleasure to be honouring him in this way." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Employees: 601The owners of Waymade Healthcare, Vijay and Bhikhu Patel grew up impoverished in Kenya, but today oversee one of the UK's leading pharmaceutical distribution firms. Waymade Healthcare supplies pharmacists and hospitals in the UK and abroad with branded and generic prescription drugs. Its subsidiary Amdipharm (launched in 2002) develops novel pharmaceuticals. The Patel brothers founded Waymade Healthcare in 1984, building off of the pharmacy business began by Vijay Patel in 1975. Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2008: Officers: Vijay Patel
Vijay opened his first pharmacy in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1975. This grew rapidly into a chain and led to the birth of Waymade. His entrepreneurial drive has fuelled company growth and he remains committed to its ongoing development and success. Waymade Healthcare plc has historically focused upon the opportunities presented by the expanding markets for European and generic pharmaceutical products. Its strengths lie in distributing and marketing with extensive in-licensing experience. With more than 1000 licences for prescription medicines, Waymade is one of the largest holders in the UK - in prescription terms, this means we can supply a significant portion of the UK retail pharmacist's needs.
Vijay and Bhikhu Patel, who together founded Waymade Healthcare, have seen it grow from a single chemist's shop in Essex into a pharmaceuticals company with a turnover in 2007 of £298m. Vijay arrived in Britain from Kenya at the age of 16 with just £5, a handful of O-levels and a fierce determination to succeed in life. After graduating from the College of Pharmacy in Leicester, in 1975 Vijay opened his first pharmacy in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. By paying close attention to the needs of local residents the business took off and this in turn fuelled growth of a chain of chemist shops. By 1982 he owned six shops and sales had doubled. Later the company expanded into buying and supplying medicines for its own chain as well as hospitals and wholesalers. Bhikhu, an architect by training, joined the company at this stage to give much needed help to the greatly increased workload generated by such rapid growth. In 1984 Vijay and Bhikhu founded Waymade Healthcare and sold all but three of the pharmacies. The brothers' vision is to see the Waymade Group ranked alongside the big multinationals. They say "We want to be the next GSK. It might take a long time but it's a nice ambition to have." Waymade employs 350 people, mostly at its main office in Basildon. The group has established a new division, Amdipharm, to acquire and promote branded products globabally with the aim of becoming a global player whilst remaining in the private sector. We have been fortunate over a number of years to have the success of the business recognised in the winning of a wide range of Awards. We acknowledge, with gratitude, the hard work and contributions of all our staff in creating, maintaining and developing a business of which we can all be justifiably proud. Waymade will continue to work towards its goal of high quality, affordable medicines. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bhikhu Patel He was born in 1947 in the arid and isolated Kenyan town of Eldoret. His father was a timber merchant and died when his three children were still very young, leaving Mrs Patel to support the family. This she did by running a nursery in the family’s tiny house, 10 feet by 12, which was also home to the family of four. Life was a daily struggle to survive. Thus, after taking his O-levels, Bhikhu got a job in a bank in order to save for a fare to England and the greater opportunities he saw there. He enrolled at Kilburn Polytechnic, working in a fish and chip shop to support himself. He did well enough in his A-levels to gain a place here at Bristol University to read Architecture. Having gained his degree and qualified professionally, he was soon launched on a promising career in architecture. But his innate instinct for business proved irresistible and in 1980, despite having married and with his first child about to be born, he abandoned the safety of a professional career for the riskier horizons of business. Just five years after qualifying, he invested the £15,000 he had been able to save in his first business – two newsagent shops in Woolwich, London. Innate flair for business coupled with very hard work and long hours soon trebled the turnover and made it possible for Bhikhu and Vijay to found their first company – Chemys Dispensing Group, based on a chain of six pharmacies. The founding of Waymade Healthcare Plc by the two brothers soon followed in 1984 and was to prove aptly named. Waymade Healthcare supplies pharmacists with branded and generic prescription drugs. The brothers strategy of ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ in the wholesale pharmaceutical market was to prove as successful as it was innovative. The company became a huge success........bris.ac.uk - 19 July 2006 - Orator: Professor Patricia Broadfoot
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Leicester, July 23, 2010:
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Vijay arrived in Britain from Kenya at the age of 16 with just £5, a handful of O-levels and a fierce determination to succeed in life. After graduating from the College of Pharmacy in Leicester, in 1975 Vijay opened his first pharmacy in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1975. This grew rapidly into a chain and led to the birth of Waymade. His entrepreneurial drive has fuelled company growth and he remains committed to its ongoing development and success.
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