BUILDING A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE: THE STORY OF A REFUGEE

MORNINGSIDE PHARMACEUTICALS CHAIRMAN DR NIK KOTECHA OBE HAS BEEN WIDELY RECOGNISED FOR HIS ENTREPRENEURSHIP. HE SPOKE TO 1284 DIRECTOR GEORGE OLIVER ABOUT WHY HIS ATTENTION TURNED TO SOCIAL ENTERPRISE he unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity’.

So said Sir Alexander Fleming at Harvard in 1945.

It’s sometimes assumed that the Nobel prize winner was referring purely to the laboratory oversight from which he observed mould that had developed on a culture plate.

But he was also making the point that, growing up in Scotland, he may have had the life of a farmer rather than that of the scientist who discovered penicillin.

Decisions made by himself and others –coupled with chance and fortune – had placed him in that laboratory in 1928. What had gone before equipped him with the knowledge to act when opportunity presented itself.

The quote features on the homepage of the Randal Charitable Foundation’s website as a reflection on both opportunity and innovation.

For Fleming’s quote in full was: “I warn you of the danger of first sitting and waiting till chance offers something. We must work, and work hard. We must know our subject. We must master all the technicalities of our craft.

“Pasteur’s often quoted dictum that Fortune favours the prepared mind is undoubtedly true, for the unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity.”

The Vision

The Foundation’s vision is to directly save a million lives in the UK and worldwide.

In doing so, part of its purpose would be to create chances for people who may never have had the hand of opportunity outstretched to them. Beneficiaries may have been disadvantaged because of poverty, education, disability or addiction.

“Enterprise comes when opportunity combines with will,” said Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, who founded the foundation with his wife in 2017 and is now chair of trustees. “Our goal is to provide people with the opportunity to act.”

The Opportunity

Dr Nik arrived in the UK as a young child, a refugee from Uganda under the regime of Idi Amin. Almost 40 years on, he still recalls what it is to be hungry and homeless.

He also remembers his family being separated for several months, ultimately to be reunited with the help of an international aid organisation.

Dr Nik and his family ended up living in a deprived area of Leicester. And from there came his opportunity.

“I was fortunate to receive a local county council grant, which enabled me to attend university, and from there to follow my passion and forge a career,” he recollects.

After time as a researcher working in drug discovery for big pharma corporations, Dr Nik started Morningside Pharmaceuticals from the garage of his home in Hertfordshire in the 1990s.

In the days before digital communications, he visited countries around the world to see firsthand where his company’s products were going. He began working with aid agencies three years after launch.

Scaling

Today, almost 15 million tablets, capsules and bottles of medicine leave the Loughborough-based site to be delivered and distributed twice daily to pharmacies and hospitals throughout the UK. Morningside has exported to more than 120 countries and also supplies UNICEF, World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Red Cross.

In 2016 it was cited by then Prime Minister Theresa May for being ‘the best of British’ as Dr Nik and other industry leaders joined her first trade mission to India. Four years earlier, the company had received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade.

Morningside’s success has been built on an end-to-end process - with R&D, product development, clinical trials, registration, sales, marketing and export all managed within its own companies.

Meanwhile, Dr Nik has various public roles, including chairing Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP’s) Innovation Board, acting as regional councillor for the CBI and cochairing the Loughborough Town Deal.

“Business is about creating jobs and wealth and a strong economy,” said Dr Nik, who is also a board member of the Midlands Engine Council. “But business also has a responsibility to support community.”

The Pivot

The story of the Foundation is both more recent and less widely known.

Childhood experience instilled in Dr Nik a lifelong ambition to move the focus of his entrepreneurial knowledge and experience from business to sustainable philanthropy.

“Real work on the ground had shaped my philosophy,” he said. “I can understand the challenges that people are facing.”

It led to Dr Nik’s 2020 decision to move from CEO to chairman of Morningside Pharmaceuticals.

In doing so, he might use more than three decades of experience of working in the developing world, and having seen challenges first hand, to support charities and NGOs in forging impact where it was needed most.

The Strategy

A look through the 86 grants made by the foundation so far reveals many unfamiliar charities and NGOs.

Focus is on directly saving lives, with impact measured by calculating lives at serious and credible risk before provision of funding.

The foundation aims for a 50:50 split between UK and global organisations. The common thread is enabling people to be self-sufficient.

“You can provide fish or a fishing rod,” said Dr Nik. “We need to give the rod so people can do things for themselves. I’ve seen the difference this makes to people’s lives.”

By providing communities with the infrastructure to grow crops or pump their own water, for example, as well as issuing the tools, skills and training for people to make their own money, an intervention can lift families out of an endless cycle of poverty.

The selection of charities echoes the work of Caroline Fiennes, a leading authority of impactful charitable donations, who demonstrates how impact in tackling specific global problems does not necessarily come from the biggest charities and NGOs.

“Our aspiration is to directly save a million lives globally,” said Dr Nik.

“We’re immensely proud to be on the way to achieving that - after three years of activity we have so far saved more than 145,000 lives and significantly improved about 260,000 more.”