marcos alves enter quarantine with the passport of an experienced accredited entrepreneur. At 26, he founded ElTenedor, an “app” for restaurant reservations, which was later acquired by Tripadvisor for more than €100 million; Premiumguest, MiResi, Traspacar, Vanylu, Scoolinary or Agrosingularity are some of the projects. Now, as head of expansion and growth at LUDA Partners, he admits that he dedicates all his efforts to the online sales services of parapharmacy, connecting with laboratories and helping pharmacies with the more serious problems of drug supply and shortages in Spain lately.
Alves attends its meetings this Friday Creation of Cornellawill give a prestigious forum and conference for leaders in entrepreneurship and economics and other fields. When asked how the current economic situation, such as financial instability and rising interest rates, is affecting startups, Alves said:it’s always hard to start” but despite all the uncertainties, he thinks the situation today is slightly better than it was fifteen years ago:
“Entrepreneurship has been democratized a bit, there is more knowledge, ways to progress, previous experience… but no magic potionIt should be carried in the business DNA, know how to learn from mistakes, be resilient and positive, always see the glass half full and have the ability to build teams.”
Any entrepreneur is a living image of a potentially successful businessman, but disappointments experienced and frustrated plans are often overlooked. Alves acknowledges that in the current universe of entrepreneurs there is a change in their general profile, a new trend has emerged, people over the age of 40 and 50 are starting new businesses. “I don’t know if it’s a fashion thing, but people are rethinking life. and draws on his personal experience, economic capacity and professional background, but continues to take on the youngest as well.
Regarding the current state of interest rate hikes, Alves acknowledges that the rise in the price of money has made it difficult to finance banks. more flexibility in acquiring new resources companies. Mutual funds and ‘business angels’ continue to look for good ideas and promising ‘startups’. “But it’s true that now investors are evaluating projects more, other metrics are being valued, and not just rapid growth, but also predicted profitability,” Alves explains.
LUDA Partners is one of the ‘startups’ that bases its business model on profit for its customers, in its case for pharmacies. The trick is to assist the business’s digitization process and revenue diversification, largely through the sale of parapharmacy products. LUDA Partners raised €2.5 million in financing for its expansion last year and has already surpassed 3,000 linked pharmacies, with 220 more each month. The key is that the LUDA service has no fixed costs; this is a ‘win-win’ situation where the pharmacy manages to raise the bills of the pharmacies and initiate an email in exchange for the ‘on-line’ pharmacy sale commission. -Trade and supplier rationalization channel powered by LUDA “software”. “LUDA has no warehouse, no pharmacy, it contributes to technology.We connect the different agencies of the pharmaceutical industry, but we have no influence on the way they work,” explains Alves.
In practice, each of the more than 22,000 pharmacies in Spain works with many cooperatives, often with a few distributors, which also have limited geographic coverage. LUDA provides an ‘online’ solution at the state level with a transnational profession. sales Internet parapharmaceutical products (not medicine). Some pharmacies have succeeded in obtaining 60% of their income from such products. Due to its agreements with Glovo and Uber, LUDA is able to manage the delivery of the required parapharmaceutical product to the customer within a few hours faster than Amazon, relying on pharmacies close to the buyer.
LUDA also connects relevant pharmacies and reports the availability of medicines in real time. It is a service that provides a quick solution to the patient so that the pharmacist can find where the drug they need is, yet another tool to correct the endemic evil of the disruption of the drug supply, which is the result of multiple causes and needs a solution.