What it does:
Kalbe Farma is Indonesia’s largest drug manufacturer, holding roughly 15% market share. It has 17,000 employees across the country.
Financials:
Kalbe recently achieved Rp 21 trillion in net sales, amounting to 9 trillion in gross profit. Total assets were most recently valued at Rp 18.1 trillion.
The good:
Great insight into the prescription pharmaceuticals business.
Hiring grads with degrees in:
Computer science
Information Technology
Software engineering
In 1966, six brothers in North Jakarta decided to found a pharmaceuticals business in their garage. They decided it should have four arms:
Prescription pharmaceuticals
Consumer health
Nutritionals
Logistics
Through significant mergers and acquisitions, the company began developing each of these capacities and growing its reach.
Now the company has an extensive portfolio of products, ranging from prescription pharmaceuticals to nutritional supplements. They operate throughout ASEAN, as well as Nigeria and South Africa. It strives to enter new markets, evidenced by the now-famous ‘Love Juice’ and milk-based health products developed under Dr Benjamin Setiawan, affectionately known as ‘Dr Boen’, one of the founding brothers. The company hasn’t stopped diversifying since.
Getting experience at Kalbe is useful if you wish to progress further into the healthcare industry because it’s a market leader. However, it’s a slow company. Top-down management and bureaucracy are a common theme. If you’re expecting to be promoted within your first two years, you may be disappointed. It’s wiser to take advantage of the training schemes available, then move on.
Graduates report respectable remuneration packages, which can include incentives like a transport allowance, pension and medical allowance.
Employees generally report favourable experiences at Kalbe, with nice peers, supportive management and strong work-life balance. Unfortunately, there are many undocumented rules and project goals can be undefined. It’s a culture that can be positively shaped by good communicators with strong initiative, but will take some hires a while to get used to.
Kalbe Farma’s values centre around health and well-being. They have five corporate values, which they call the ‘Panca Sradha Kalbe’:
‘Trust is the glue of life’
‘Mindfulness is the foundation of our action’
‘Innovation is the key to our success’
‘Strive to be the best’
‘Interconnectedness is a universal way of life’
Kalbe historically aims for aggressive environmental performance targets, yielding a 5% energy consumption reduction across all four elements of the business. They track economic value generated for the community, including direct contributions to government, which recently totalled Rp 10.7 billion.
Resources are conserved via deals with suppliers, primarily pertaining to keeping old business relationships so seasonal materials, like fruit and vegetables, don’t go to waste. Despite long-standing distribution deals, they also diversify their supplies to mitigate any leverage against them. This all culminates in better economic and environmental sustainability. Just like Dr Boen and his five ambitious brothers envisioned decades ago.