South African pharma billionaire Stephen Saad has been announced as the winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the annual All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) gala banquet in Johannesburg on Friday.
At the awards, which was hosted in partnership with CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa, Stephen Saad said, “You work at something and you build something together with the team and seldom have time to look back. To be recognized for it in this way is wonderful and particularly so for Aspen. We are a company with roots in South Africa and manufacturing in South Africa. We’ve grown our local talent to become a world player and Aspen is just a wonderful South African story.”
Saad, who is the founder of Aspen Pharmacare, Africa’s largest pharmaceuticals company, said that one of the biggest challenges he has faced recently was breaking into the generics market.
“Aspen competes with multinationals – we started a domestic company and have gone offshore to become a global company manufacturing in South Africa for domestic and export markets,” Saad said.
“Going forward we will continue to look for strategic partners. We have completed a number of significant transactions and Aspen has built a really strong foundation now. Our aspiration in the short term is to build on that base and to double our size.”
Traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Aspen Pharmacare markets generic medicines in 150 countries. Saad famously became a millionaire at age 29 after he sold his share in the drug business Covan Zurich for $3 million. He now has a net worth FORBES estimates at $1.27 billion.