Thiago Marques was only 15 years old when he knocked on the door of a pharmacy in Paraguaçu, in the interior of Minas Gerais, to ask for a job. He heard a “no” as an answer, but did not give up. A week later, his insistence was rewarded with an opportunity as a delivery man.
Years later, he would become a competitor of that boss – and founder of Hiper Farma, an independent pharmacy associative network that today has more than 1,100 units and annual revenues of R $ 2.7 billion.
“I spent a week asking for a job in this pharmacy. Every day I left school and went there. In the end, he gave me the chance,” Marques told the podcast From zero to toppresented by Mariana Amaro.
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“Two years later, the owner threw a coin to decide between me and another delivery man. I won. But that marked me. I thought: I can’t let someone decide my life in a real coin.”
Son of a bricklayer and a cleaning lady, Thiago grew up without many opportunities in a city with less than 20,000 inhabitants. He worked at dawn at a snack trailer and in the morning at the fields with his father.
The pharmacy emerged as a viable alternative for allowing him to study in the afternoon and yet earn a little more.
“In a small town, either you go to the pharmacy or to the bank. And as there was no study, the pharmacy looked the best way,” he explains.
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Delivery, clerk and manager
Within the pharmacy, Thiago was from delivery to clerk, then manager. At 18, he was already running a branch. It was there that it started to dream louder. He decided to study administration and later joined the corporate pharmaceutical sector. However, even with a solid career, something was missing.
“I was doing well financially, but I was not happy. I wanted more purpose. In 2012, I decided to leave a major laboratory and set up the company. In the first year, the profit was $ 212. Last year, we made $ 2.7 billion.”
Hyper Farma came up with a simple proposal: unite independent pharmacies to compete with large networks. The associative model allows small entrepreneurs to share technology, marketing and negotiation with suppliers, maintaining their autonomy.
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“Today we have over 1,100 connected pharmacies. The projection for 2025 is to exceed $ 3 billion in revenues,” he says.
Thiago’s trajectory shows how resilience, initiative and purpose can transform stories. “The pharmacy gave me a chance to start. But what brought me so far was the decision to never let my life be defined by luck.”
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