Building a Healthy Supply Chain Through Partnerships

Listen to the Uncaged podcast interview with Hristo Petkov

Uncaged: Tell us a little about your background.

I currently work at Controlant as VP of partnerships, I took on the role
about six months ago when I wanted to find a new challenge, and I really
like the mission of Controlant to enable pharma companies to deliver
products and eliminate waste within the supply chain, delivering products
to their patients.

Uncaged: What does it mean to do partnerships?

Hristo: Partnerships mean collaborating with others. We might have the
greatest in-house solutions, but what is it good for if we don‘t partner with other companies and sell it to other companies? So it‘s very much finding the gaps in the market and being able to collaborate with others to fill those gaps. Sometimes others might want to do the same things in in-house, but they‘re not professionals or don‘t have the focus. While it might take some people or some companies hundreds of millions of dollars of investments and an army of people to implement the solution, we might be able to do it in our scale-up company better, faster, and cheaper. So it‘s really about partnering and enabling others.

Uncaged: During the worst parts of the pandemic, we heard a lot of discussion about the supply chain, which is still not back to normal. And we also hear about amazing innovation. Where are you seeing people and businesses focusing their energy right now?

Hristo: Mainly, the focus is on innovation through digitization by far. What you heard about the supply chain during the Covid-19 pandemic is everyday life in logistics. Maybe I‘m exaggerating a little bit, but many people really found out about logistics and supply chains, and what happened was focusing on how we get better from here. Some companies like Controlant offer real-time temperature and location visibility that really came to life during the Covid pandemic. Actually, the company grew so much over the past three years because Controlant enabled Pfizer to deliver the Covid-19 vaccine, and this was a kickstarter. We helped a company like Pfizer to succeed and how we take it further.

Uncaged: Tell me a little more about that. I love to see the innovation that was accelerated during the pandemic. Tell me how Controlant helps evolve or push that process forward.

Hristo: First of all, we digitized real-time visibility by putting a temperature
tracker into the pharmaceutical product so you can ensure that the
product is okay and safe. Then through software and a platform, you can
share the data, and you can make sense of the data. We have a proven
and trusted solution, and being a successful company, we‘re extremely
focused on innovation and sustainability. To be able to make a difference
in logistics and digital solutions, it‘s extremely important to innovate and
better your product and to have sustainability.