Sadeck Vawda – Our ambition for 2022 is to position ourselves as a one stop healthcare provider

2021 is nearly over. How has Unicorn performed during this year?

Taking into consideration the context regarding the pandemic, Unicorn had a reasonable year with a proper growth of the business. Various factors have contributed to this. Firstly, we have the commitment and support of our staff despite the Covid situation in Mauritius. Secondly, the percentage of employees vaccinated against Covid-19 is of 95%. As we are in the healthcare industry, we have carried a great awareness campaign on the importance of the vaccination against the Covid. However, we have not imposed on any of our staff to get vaccinated. We wanted them to decide freely. This has lowered the impact on the absenteeism and on the productivity. Thirdly, we made our best to maintain our delivery services of medicines. When we lacked staff in the store, employees from other departments have also helped to prepare the orders.

Finally, Unicorn distributes a wide and diversified range of products such as medicines for acute and chronic diseases, vitamins and immune system boosters, antigenic tests, etc. The sales for these products have not decreased during the lockdown.
Besides, during this past year, Unicorn has also launched brands such as Mentholatum Deep Heat / Deep Freeze, Sweet N Low. We have also focused on our digital strategy to reach our customers.

What are the key lessons from this year?

One of the lessons is to reinvent yourself so as to adapt to the new normality. This includes rethinking your strategy, your products and services. Moreover, it is in challenging times that we can know if we can really rely on our staff. At Unicorn, we always knew that our staff would stand by us and provide us with the necessary support. We have seen that during both lockdowns. We learned how to tackle the supply chain issues as we had delays in the arrival of our orders. We had to be very organized to ensure that we had enough stock for our clients.

Our digital strategy has also helped us a lot, we found new ways to reach and work with our clients and partners.

Are you looking forward to 2022 & what can we expect in 2022 from Unicorn?

We are looking forward to 2022 as I think that the worst is behind us. With the opening of the borders, many people will be getting back to work. The economic conditions will improve and impact positively on the business environment.
Moreover, we have reached a vaccination rate of about 75% of the population being fully vaccinated. People will be in better health and this will promote a feeling of well-being.

In 2022, Unicorn will launch some exciting new products in the field of cardiology, dentistry, neurology and consolidate its presence in the wellness field. We are looking forward in expanding our portfolio of products. Our ambition is to position ourselves as a one stop healthcare provider. We are planning other changes such as migrating our ERP system and we are also working on enhancing our talent management system at Unicorn and build up the wellness strategy for our staff.