INIU - Your True Nature
INIU is 100% natural, has zero added sugar and is designed for a healthy, hassle-free lifestyle.
- Location
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Lisbon,
Portugal
Categories: Food & Beverage Mixed Digital/Non-Digital Mixed B2B/B2C
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Investment
sought: - £300,000
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Equity
offered: - 12.50%
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Investment
amount: - £305,250
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Valuation
(pre-money): - £2,100,000
Idea
Introduction
We all want to be healthy. Even if we’re not actively pursuing it, the thought sits in the back of our minds. But it’s often the case that shortly after making positive habit changes, we lack the will and discipline to continue. There are plenty of reasons we might give up; need for determination, lack of time, inconvenience.
INIU emerges to tackle this issue. We focus on offering 100% natural, healthy products, that are both convenient and practical for the consumer. The innovative use of cryogenic freezing in the production process means that our products are frozen at the point of freshness, retaining 99% of nutrients, and requiring no additives nor preservatives.
We aim to become the top health food brand in Europe. Our vision is to fuel the healthy movement in Europe by creating new products, built on the foundations of “health” and “convenience”.
Intended impact
INIU’s mission is simple: we want to help people have a healthier lifestyle by offering a wide range of products that are both healthy and convenient for the final consumer. And we intend to achieve this with minimal social or environmental impact.
Making juices from scratch can be wasteful and very time-consuming. With INIU you waste minimal food and time. There’s also little waste created during the production process. Almost every bit of the ingredients are used, and the final product comes in minimal, recyclable packaging.
INIU is 100% natural, has zero added sugar and is designed for a healthy, hassle-free lifestyle.
Substantial accomplishments to date
From our inception, we set out to build a brand with strong consumer focus. We successfully launched INIU at the beginning of 2017 with sales made directly through our own website. And as those sales grew, we looked for other sales channels.
El-Corte Inglés, a high-end retailer was the first to stock our juices. And just a couple of months later, we began selling in our second retailer Auchan, in Portugal. Building on that momentum, we’re now in negotiations with SONAE group, one of the biggest retailers in Portugal, with over 400 stores in the country.
Very recently we participated in the WebSummit as an ALPHA start-up, where we were able to introduce our brand to a larger international audience. We considered this a huge milestone for us, as we were featured as one of the most promising start-ups in Portugal, culminating in an invitation to a meet-and-greet with Portugal’s President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
We’re also always looking for opportunities to showcase INIU through trade shows and events, like Alimentaria, one of the biggest food fairs in Portugal.
Monetisation strategy
Our sales and marketing team will focus on getting the brand into retailers, markets, restaurants and hotels in the UK.
Our products offer a strong value proposition to the food industry; they’re very convenient, create minimal waste and require no skill to prepare them to a consistently high quality. We believe that restaurants and hotels will love INIU as there is no staff training required, and no kitchen mess or produce waste involved.
We aim for these stockists to spread the word, and then consumers will want INIU in big retailers and supermarkets to use at home.
Meanwhile, our Country Manager and their team will develop relationships with these big retailers, allowing us to offer more competitive prices to UK consumers.
Use of proceeds
We’ll use the funds raised to launch INIU in the UK. As well as setting up a local office in London and building a strong marketing and commercial team there, we intend to invest in a marketing campaign to launch the brand in the UK market.
Getting INIU into the minds and mouths of UK consumers will be our main focus. We’ll target digital influencers (social, blogs, vlogs), press, TV, and more. We aim for the brand awareness generated to set the foundations for our commercial team to get INIU into big retailers, health and regular shops, restaurants, hotels and smaller cafés.
Some of the funds will also go to supporting the manufacturing costs involved in developing this new market.
Crowdfunding and product sales funds will be deployed as follows:
Offices and HR: 38%
Sales, marketing and communication: 36%
Manufacturing and distribution: 16%
New product development: 7%
Training and travelling: 3%
Market
Target market
Facts from the Nielsen Global Health & Wellness Report (2015):
• 49% of global respondents believe they are overweight, 50% are trying to lose weight
• Consumers seek fresh, natural and minimally processed foods with ingredients that help fight disease and promote good health
• Health attributes are most important and consumers are willing to pay a premium for them
• Healthy categories are growing faster than indulgent categories.
According to Euromonitor’s Health and Wellness in the UK report (2017), the ongoing health and wellness trend is not only focused on the importance of staying fit and healthy, but also on the reduction in both sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Our target market is people aged 25-54 in UK, consisting of 25m people, who want to lead a healthier lifestyle and:
• Are concerned with their eating habits and want to find healthier and more convenient products;.
• Don’t have the time to source and prepare healthy foods.
Characteristics of target market
In the UK, 80% of people rated that heath was the most important factor in their food buying decisions, and many consumers have gradually adopted juices made from fresh fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy lifestyle.
Following this trend, the global market for cold pressed juices is anticipated to grow at 10% CAGR during 2016-2022, partly due to the shifting focus of manufacturers towards organic fruits and vegetables.
The Healthy Food & Organic market in the UK is worth about €2.6 billion in 2017 according to the FiBL report, and looking ahead, it’s expected to continue to grow steadily year on year.
Therefore, we believe that 'no added sugar' is a strong USP to drive sales, especially as the market is more aware than ever of the harmful effects of sugar due to the UK government tax on sugar in beverages (to be introduced April 2018).
We therefore, see the large potential market for INIU products, with a great opportunity for an innovative product offering convenience, on top of the health benefits of the ingredients that consumers are looking for.
Marketing strategy
Our core strategy is raising product awareness. We stand out by having a novel, highly specialised manufacturing process that creates a premium quality product that tastes and feels good. Once consumers try it, they’ll see how INIU can help them lead healthier lives.
We’ll raise awareness of our manufacturing methods and once consumers understand the benefits of the cryogenic process we can further gain their trust.
Our marketing team will use media coverage (press, TV, social) and approach digital influencers to secure strategic partnerships, reaching an even wider audience via valued UK influencers.
We will attend four international food fairs in 2018: Food Matters Live, UK; The Food Entrepreneur Show, UK; Alimentaria, Barcelona; SIAL, Paris.
Our marketing team will communicate our brand and values. We want to be the figurehead of a movement, the biggest health food brand in Europe. We’ll also run campaigns & competitions, maintaining a strong digital presence and driving online sales.
Competition strategy
There are other brands in Europe that sell healthy foods and functional juices. Where INIU stands out from competitors is:
• Our manufacturing method through cryogenics that allows us to preserve 99% of nutrients by freezing our juices within 90 seconds and generating little waste.
• Our juices have no added sugar, are 100% natural and offer higher nutritional value than cold-pressed options.
• High-quality: As we add no preservatives, and use our novel manufacturing method, we can keep our products as fresh as if they were prepared there and then.
• Organic: The origin of our ingredients is very important to the quality of the product. When we launch in the UK market we are changing to organic agriculture and will secure the organic certification.