Widecells Group PLC (LON:WDC) Chief Executive Officer João Andrade caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their new exclusive agreement with White Apex to expand into MENA and Asia-Pacific
Q1: Some exciting news today in the form of an exclusive agreement with White Apex. João, congratulations on the agreement, it seems to be a huge milestone for the company, can you give us a bit more information on what this agreement entails and what it means for the Widecells Group?
A1: Most important aspect of this deal is that we have identified a strategic partner to work with us in 2 regions that are of interest which is the Middle East and Asia and also some countries in North Africa. For more than a year I have been saying the key to our success is to scale up the business quickly and in order for us to do that, we need to find the right strategic partners in different regions of the world and this is what this agreement represents.
Now, the interesting thing about the agreement is that in our deal with White Apex they are going to be promoting all of our product offering from WideAcademy, which is education and training, from CellPlan, our insurance plan for stem cells and also with Widecells, for the stem cell storage services, they will be promoting all the products in this region.
So, it’s a very exciting time for us that we are now preparing to enter this market.
Q2: Crucially, revenues are imminent from this so when can we expect first revenues to commence and what is the revenue structure going to look like going forward?
A2: Ok, so that’s an interesting question. What we’re doing at the moment is we are completing the formal agreements until the end of this month, until 31st October, and following the formal agreements, White Apex will be sponsoring 2,000 doctors in the UAE and a couple of other locations first. Basically, what this means is they are paying £120 per doctor for us to develop content and courseware which is specific to them.
Now, the idea behind this is to educate the medical professionals on the benefits of stem cell technology, on storing stem cells, which will ultimately lead to us also selling insurance policies and that’s the strategy that they have in mind. So, that’s £240,000 following the signature of the agreement and then the wider platform for WideAcademy for the education and training because they see, as we see, that this is very important to educate the market first, they are looking to localise the platform we’ve built in English first and localise it to the Middle Eastern markets and for that, we’re expecting to generate a further £250,000 in revenue before the end of the year.
They are also becoming agents for Widecells which means they’ll be procuring clients in the Middle East, starting in the UAE, sending the baby’s umbilical cord blood samples, that are collected locally, and sending to them to our facilities in Manchester. So, that means they pay £15,000 upfront to become our agents in each country they enter within the territories which is Middle East and Asia, excluding China, and then we generate revenues from the stem cells that are sent to our facility in Manchester.
With CellPlan, the final one, what they’re doing is introducing us to insurance companies locally and also to cord blood banks and then helping to manage that relationship so that we can, with insurance companies, have CellPlan included or as an add-on to existing private health insurance. Policies. With the corporate banks, it’s for cord blood banks to offer the first-year policy to all their new clients that are now storing stem cells with them but also introducing us to their existing database of clients that do not have an insurance for stem cell treatment.
So, this is an agreement that covers all our product offering and for the three divisions.
Q3: So, who exactly are White Apex? I see some of the team will be heading up a regional office for you, can you explain what makes them the right partner and team for you?
A3: Dr Ahmed Alawi, he will be the Managing Director of MENA and the Asia-Pacific region, he is a very experienced stem cell scientist, he led a team at Genzyme, which was the third largest biotech company in the world, they were acquired by Sanofi in 2011. He’s also founder of The Middle East Thrombosis Institute, he’s worked for several Fortune500 and FTSE companies and he combines science with business so he’s a very successful entrepreneur. He understands the relevance of what we’re doing for the stem cell industry because he’s been involved in it for many years, he understands the challenges and he sees the solutions here at Widecells.
We also have Ahmad Jemain who is the Chief Operating Officer for the region and he’s worked in insurance for a number of years, he knows the region quite well, he’s been introducing us to insurance companies so the discussions are well underway.
We then have Zakaria Aziz who is a very successful entrepreneur that started the RAY International Group more than a decade ago which is now a very large corporation that’s working from Oman, with offices throughout the Middle East and Asia. They are mainly focussed on the maintenance, uses, oil mining, gas, energy, healthcare and education, so a very large company. So, a successful entrepreneur helping us to develop the business through the Asian market in this case.
So, we have a very strong team over there, experienced entrepreneurs who understand the insurance and the stem cell market and how to do business within this region.
Q4: This agreement obviously rapidly fast-tracks the Group’s expansion in terms of both geography and sales and revenues. Can we expect a similar strategy applied to other regions?
A4: Well, we had done something already in Brazil so that’s where our geographical expansion started outside the UK and Europe, we now have the Middle East and the Asia region but because it’s a very large region to cover, we have now the strategic partner with us. What we can expect is for example, with WideCells we are starting with UAE and we can see that White Apex is paying us £15,000 to set up the agents for them and then they’ll start sending samples from Dubai but every new market that they enter will have a similar structure.
With insurance companies and cord blood banks within this region, there’s a lot of ground to cover so we have focussed on this agreement first, we have UK and Europe and in Brazil what can happen is we might expect us to look into the whole Latin American market, more towards the end of next year.
At the moment, we are focussing on Europe, UK, Asia, the Middle East and Brazil, these are the regions we are focussing on which is a lot of ground to cover.
