Mario Villarreal
Araceli Zagal
Jose Antonio Zarazua
Jose Manuel Millones Coronel
EGADE Business School Tecnologico de Monterrey
Ezequiel Reficco
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Nowadays, people are looking for professional opportunities in a world where each day is more competitive. Among all tasks in our daily live, we put off the most important ones such as spending time with family and giving our bodies the right fuel to keep going. The truth is that we dedicate less time to ourselves and keep pushing our bodies to their limit. We don't care about our body until it is too late and the process is irreversible. Among all useful activities we do daily there is one that we overlook: a healthy diet.
There is a saying, "you are what you eat"; I would add " you are what you eat and how you feel." If people eat unhealthy they will feel without energy and be too tired to get things done, because they are not getting the right essential nutrients. People often feel unmotivated, not because of their job, but because of the conditions generated around it.
After an exhaustive quest for a project that satisfies their needs, SioSi found the answer to help people have energy and perform well all day long by building a whole range of products that allow people to eat in a balanced and healthy way with the ease of being transported, stored, and consumed almost anywhere.
Yumma offers a variety of natural foods in powder that has been processed through a process known as lyophilization. They were granted a patent on a process already in the market, but with natural products with a high concentration of good fats, which makes them the only company able to escalate this process with any food.
Lyophilization is a process that removes the water of products by directly transforming water from a solid phase to a gaseous phase skipping the liquid phase, a process called sublimation. To perform the process, the product to lyophilized is frozen and placed in a container where vacuum pressure conditions are applied and a minimum amount of heat is added. Since heat addition is minimum, the food preserves its nutrients and can be packaged for long periods of time. Lyophilization is a special type of dehydration since the latter takes place at normal atmospheric pressure, passing from a solid, to a liquid, to a gaseous phase. This process severely damages the end product’s properties since many of the essential vitamins and nutrients are lost because of the large amount of added heat. Furthermore, while the product may still look good, it may not be the best for feeding purposes.
Since the project started after seeing a university project in Morelia University, the natural product to start with was avocados. Avocados are called "green gold", while some say it's a fruit, other say it's a vegetable. It is widely known to have a lot of properties and high nutritional content. It can also be prepared in different ways and used for different applications included face treatments at a spa.
Even though lyophilization exists in the industry, it is widely used for other natural foods with low fat content, such as bananas and other fruits which are easier to lyophilized, since the lack of fat makes the process easier and quicker. However, nobody had developed the process for avocado before.
While low fat products need standard conditions to be lyophilized, foods with high fat content like avocado need to meet special process conditions to be properly lyophilized, since the natural fat content is very prone to decay and lose its properties if the temperature and/or pressure are not correct. This is the reason why the company obtained international patents.
To use the properties of the freeze-dried innovations for the benefit of consumers, the company developed a series of mixed powdered beverages by mixing other “superfoods” such as cacao, chia, chlorella, and other ingredients to create functional products such as vegan proteins. These mixes are complete and balanced meals that contain the natural vitamins, minerals, enzymes, essential fats, and antioxidants that offer potential health benefits, starting with the fact that its intake provides more energy and nutrition than other types of food. By consuming them you drastically increase the nutritional load of what you eat, so that your body feels satisfied. And the company has created these superfood mixes without the use of any additives, colorants, flavorings or anything artificial, so it is 100% pure natural food.
The team found that there was a great opportunity in this new application since lyophilization of high fat food had never been achieved before because the composition of these kind of products have a molecule arrangement that makes it hard to separate water from.
Their first attempt to publicize their products was within the food fair "SIAL Paris" with the presentation of lyophilized guacamole, easily accessible, where they got the maximum recognition for innovation out of hundreds of other products. This great success encouraged them to go to the next step by creating a superfoods line of products by combining different ingredients for different applications.
After successfully lyophilizing avocados, innovation continued with a wide variety of products with high fat content like coconut. So far they have performed tests with many high fat content products; for some of them they have found the correct application that can be escalated. Today Yumma Superfoods only offers a fraction of these foods, but their scope is to increase their portfolio up to 40 different natural grains and fruits that can go through the very same process.
While the company leaders are eager to enter the Zero poverty SDG, it is very difficult since governments in Latin America are hard to deal with. However, the company's goal is to improve health and happiness in millions. It is estimated that Yumma has reached 70 thousand people to improve their lives by consuming their products. The goal for 2030 is to impact at least 10 million people by establishing new distribution channels and partnerships with retailers and key customers that can take the product to larger markets and other countries.
The major impact that Yumma does to society today is the possibility to offer healthy products with zero additives or artificial ingredients. Commercial food has a great amount of artificial ingredients and additives that can make for a longer shelf life, but can produce diseases and harm our body in the long term. We may not feel it but they are diminishing our life expectancy and are not offering the nutrients we need to perform our daily activities. The company´s CEO says: "I eat my products daily; I prepare a shake with two or three spoons of Yumma and it gives me plenty of energy". It is important to note that all Yumma products are registered as food, not as supplements.
At this point Yumma sells its products in B2C and B2B channels. It is mainly sold in retail stores as a final product to customers or as an ingredient to healthy food companies that use lyophilized avocados or coconuts by adding it to their end products.
The innovation and patents are the core of the business. The current Yumma line has been designed to bring to market real food that can benefit the health of consumers. In addiction, the freeze drying innovation is being used to create additional product lines such as bars, snacks, and baby food.
The food mixes offered by Yumma have a high nutritional value, formulated to enhance the benefits of each ingredient helping to nourish the body, regulate blood glucose levels, reduce cravings, and regulate the feeling of fullness. The product offering is 100% vegan, organic, raw, gluten-free, dairy free, without additives and without dyes.
Nowadays, more and more people are worrying of what they eat and where they get it; the background and philosophy of Yumma, along with the benefits it can bring to our bodies, attract people with many backgrounds, and not only women but men as well. Even though prices are accessible to everyone, the value added to the product is highly praised by consumers, and they have created a base of loyal customers that keeps growing.
The fact that Yumma explains the lyophilization process and how it works gives the company a lot of credibility, and more important the products are consistent with the philosophy. Being transparent to customers and explaining our mission and vision of the company, helps our customers to convince that Yumma is a solution and a way of life that they can adopt.
By consuming Yumma, people have access to a new option of natural products, by giving their bodies nutrients and vitamins with natural products that taste good and look good. By having a healthy diet, people have more energy to perform daily activities, be more productive, and feel happy and fulfilled.
About 75% of the employees in the company are women. Yumma gives women the opportunity to develop a career in the Company, assigning more responsibilities per their experience and achievements. About 10% of these women are the sole provider of their homes. They are single mothers or in some cases come from broken families with problems of violence, so the daily work in the company helps them to have a purpose.
Finally, the philosophy of Yumma to make people happy is consistent with how people feel working for Yumma, “we are doing a product to help people be more satisfied, thus we need to practice this philosophy within our company, so that all colleagues within Yumma are satisfied with their work and life”.
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Gerónimo Villanueva Noguera, Ing. MBA
Yumma Superfoods is a line of products created by SioSi Alimentos, whose philosophy is implied in the name itself, "Sí o sí" which means "yes or yes" which can be understood as "we achieve it because we can, and we will".
The product offered by Yumma Superfoods are mixtures of lyophilized natural avocados and coconuts that preserve their proteins and nutrients mixed with other ingredient and help nourish people with natural food to help them feel better and perform well all day long.
Yumma Superfood products undergo a process called lyphilization which takes off water from high-fat products like avocados or cocoa through a process where pressure and temperature conditions are set to certain values so that the food does not lose its nutrients. The food can also last longer since it has no water and can be mixed with other natural ingredients to create products with a natural flavor and high nutritional content.