Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

The business plans to leverage excess capacity of other consumer product supply chains to reduce cost, ensure quality, and extend reach to franchised dispensing points throughout the country. Curatio intends to address all dimensions of performance—geographic access, affordability, availability, and quality. The financial viability of the model rests on Curatio’s ability to implement best practices from the fast-moving consumer goods industry to reduce logistics costs and to improve the margin mix at the point of purchase. Implicit in the economics of the business plan is a need to have high availability and diligent financial management to ensure that the venture remains profitable. Curatio’s current plan is to distribute to over 6,000 outlets by 2010, which represents roughly 50 percent of the current outlets in Ghana. If successful, Curatio could change the landscape of drug retailing in rural areas and have a substantial health impact in Ghana, as well as expand into other countries within the ECOWAS region.

• Curatio’s business model is based around reduction in the logistics cost of delivering to rural pharmacies (through leveraging fine-mesh distribution networks) in Ghana and using high control over Point of Purchase (through franchising) and better margin-mix management (through private label, generic and branded products as used in consumer prod retailing) to gain efficiencies at the point-of-sale.
• Primary distribution from the warehouse (near Accra) will be carried out using a fleet, leased or outsourced, to private distributors who currently distribute consumer products (i.e. Unilever Ghana); the secondary distribution will be using distribution capabilities of these private distributors utilizing their fine mesh network to reduce secondary distribution costs.
• The chemical sellers that will be served would be under a franchise arrangement and would require some training.
• Margin mix management within the portfolio of drugs will be effectively used to ensure recovery of fixed and variable costs in different ways.
• Curatio has teamed up with critical partners in the value chain to deliver the right product in the right place, and created communication at PoP to educate the communities serviced by its franchisees.