About Our Founder
The industrial activities of Selçuklu Holding and its subsidiary İLKO İlaç San. ve Tic. A.Ş are based on the Honorary President Mustafa Öncel’s drugstore pharmacology, which started with magistral drug production in the 1960s and his investments in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Mustafa Öncel was born in 1929 in the Doğanbey district of Konya. He studied at Konya Boy's High School at obtained his B.Sc. diploma at the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, School of Pharmacy in 1953. After the graduation, he started to work as a pharmacist at Çankırı State Hospital.
The Pharm. Mustafa Öncel opened his first pharmacy in the Yalvaç District of Isparta, and then he opened Işık Pharmacy in Konya followed by Büyük Eczane, and Mustafa Öncel acted as a freelance pharmacist for many years.
Pharmacist Mustafa Öncel’s investments in the pharmaceutical industry beginning from 1973 resulted in successful sales with international partners.
This knowledge and experience of more than fifty years is currently continuing with İLKO Pharmaceuticals, which was started in 2012 in order to bring this heritage to the summit.
MESSAGE
Esteemed Teammates,
I have been working since 1953 to serve my country and to create job opportunities. It has always been a great pleasure for me to a have walk around in between the machines in the facilities that I have founded and to watch my teammates coming to work in the morning and in the evening and to see that my family grew as days passed. I have seen my employees getting married, then having children and even bringing their grandchildren to the facilities for a stroll. This made me realize that one of the most meaningful things that one can do is to create job opportunities.
When I was a child, I heard the expression “The father went to earn his bread,” so much that this made bread a unique value for us all. No one needed to tell us to pick it up when we saw a piece of bread on the street. We would never step on it but pick it up to place it somewhere else. Besides, there was no one around to tell us to do so or to punish us when we stepped on bread. I then understood that once you turn something into a value, you no longer have to control it. Therefore, do not be content with just listing down your company’s values on your website but make each one of them a real value just like bread.
I always have great goals in all my life. While I had a pharmacy, I focused on to be a pharmaceutical manufacturer and I achieved. Now I wish that ILKO is a global pharmaceutical manufacturer, I am more than 80 now and am dreaming of becoming a global pharmaceutical producer. Whenever I thought big, there were thieves of hope around me but I never heard what they were saying. I realized that one can only give hope as much as one has so think of me when they say you cannot do, think big, dream of it and realize it. Keep in mind that nothing can be achieved in life without working hard for it. If there are things that you wish to do but cannot find the time for it, this means these are things that you are not fully sure of how much you desire them. Success has very much to do with to what extent you are prepared to sacrifice things to achieve that objective.
I would like to draw your attention to especially what could be achieved when determination and hard work come together and when one works with competent and honest people. Try to find solutions to your problems with family members if the problem has to do with your home or with your colleagues when it has to do with work; ask for their comments. Never forget that none of us is as clever as all of us.
In the twentieth century, things used to work much slower but we are now in 21st century and remember : those who slow down become losers. Do not slow down the business by implementing wrong policies of institutionalization. Adapt yourself fast to changing conditions and take your position.
Today’s business is no longer conducted as we used to do in the past, the market sets the prices so your survival is very much based on your investment and you also need to profit so the only thing that you can control is your costs. Work efficiently, invest in people and technology and drop down your costs.
Like the places you live in and work at. If you like that place or that thing, you then see that place or thing as somewhere or something nice. But if you do not like the most beautiful place in the world, you cannot consider it as a nice place.
I wish you all success.
Pharm. Mustafa ÖNCEL