Aims to Connect Drug Companies to Pharmacies
Hebron, West Bank – Ayat Halaika, dressed in a traditional long turquoise dress and a brown headscarf, her makeup perfectly done, strides into the dusty Friends coffee shop on the main street of this West Bank town. She opens her black leather briefcase and takes out her laptop.
“I hope you have Internet here,” she says briskly to the waiter, even before ordering something to drink. “What’s the password?”
Although just 22, Halaika is a woman in a hurry. She has temporarily dropped out of university to concentrate on her start-up, Medichain. She’s hired six part-time employees, including her older brother who does marketing. And she has big plans for the future.
“I want to make my company very successful,” she told The Media Line. “Then I’d like to go to the US and get my bachelors, masters and PhD. I want to make connections with Silicon Valley too.”
The idea for Medichain, Halaika said, came while she was working as an assistant in a pharmacy in Hebron. There was often a delay in getting medications or other products. Medichain offers a “virtual inventory” of thousands of products. Ten drug companies in the West Bank have already started using her system, and she hopes she is poised for the business to take off.
Hebron is one of the more traditional cities in the West Bank, and most women were traditional Muslim dress. Halaika, one of seven siblings, says she fasts on the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and prays five times a day.
“I pray for the business to succeed,” she says with a grin.
She says that her family completely supports her and she is in no hurry to get married. While some young women in Hebron marry early, at age 18 or 19, it is becoming more acceptable for girls to marry later. She mentions she recently went to a wedding of a friend, who was 27.
“My parents really support me in my business,” she said. “Maybe my husband won’t support me as much. That’s why I want to see the business grow before I get married.”
She has put in $5000 of her own money, and received a grant of $2700 from the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI), partly funded by the US government. She has also attended a series of training courses at PICTI covering everything from writing a business plan to website design to marketing to pitching.
“She is very passionate about her dream and has a high level of commitment,” Walaa Samara, a program manager at PICTI who worked closely with Halaika told The Media Line. “We give a lot of attention to these girls.”
Samara said that while many of the women start the program at PICTI, fewer finish, dropping out along the way. She said that Halaika’s parents came to several of the events where parents were invited and showed evident pride in their daughter.
Halaika says she learned a tremendous amount at PICTI, and hopes to continue to be in touch with them. She attends any events that she is invited to, and is working hard to improve her English. She has put together a power-point presentation in English, using an online dictionary for words she didn’t know.
So far, she says, ten medical companies are using her system. But there are more than 150 companies in the West Bank, along with 1000 pharmacies. She intends to get every one of these companies to sign on to Medichain.