Ending malnutrition with fortified food products that parents love

It took Gisela just two years to go from the idea for her venture to action. Those years were intense. Gisela had already thought about nutritionally fortifying food products when she came across Professor Muhammed Yunus’ work along similar lines – micronutrient-fortified yogurt – in Bangladesh: “I looked at what he did right and what he could do better with his social businesses and learned from both.” Her research took in endless hours of background reading and benchmarking. She determined that what very poor people supplement their staple rice-and-beans diet with when possible, is dehydrated soup, and cool drink mixes. That refined her thinking in product line terms. There were hours of meetings and collaborative work with other NGOs, government health officials, food manufacturers, marketers and nutritionists. There were failed prototypes and resource challenges and closed doors. And then there was the slow climb of refinement of the successful prototypes, for quality, taste and nutrition.

In 2013, through sheer determination, hard work and smart footwork, Nutrivida was founded as a joint venture between Fifco and Professor Yunus, with seed capital from Fifco and Gisela herself. In the first month, a disappointing 2,000 units were sold. But with persistence, sales grew exponentially. Today, monthly sales are 350,000 units, and Gisela is able to talk confidently about her expansion plans to other territories in the region.

Nutrivida is a case study in the kind of systems thinking that social entrepreneurship demands. The distribution network of community saleswomen, for instance, is designed to deliver social benefits beyond affordable enhanced-nutrition foods. Along with the products, this now 520-women-strong workforce raises educational levels in their communities by dispensing nutritional information to their customers; and along with the independence that their new income delivers, the women of this sales team, most of whom have severely limited options, gain the unquantifiable value of self-esteem.

Moving from the start-up phase through the mid-project phase to the maturity Nutrivida now exhibits had its own set of leadership challenges. “There are many skills I need now that I don’t have; I have to rely on others,” Gisela says. Always collaborative, Gisela has entrenched a network around Nutrivida of more than 35 NGOs, government institutions and companies; and she has involved many of her peer Fellows of the Central Americanl Fellows: “A lot of other people have joined me – not giving money, but giving their skills pro bono.”

She has now also appointed a general manager.

How is that working for her?

“I find it difficult to let go!” she laughs. “I said to my GM: ‘I’m giving you Nutrivida as a stepmother.’ It’s super-difficult to detach: I can’t. I can’t! it’s not a project, it’s my life.”

But the realities of Nutrivida’s success and pending expansion mean she is preparing to let go more. “I think I can. I can be more of a sounding board,” she muses. Gisela also lives the philosophy that good leaders are those who surround themselves with people who know more than they do; she has great confidence in her team.

Gisela defined leadership in just these terms: “Leadership is dream high, as high as you can imagine,” she said. “Work hard… and try to invite and energize as many people as possible. It will be nice to do it yourself, but much better if you can enlighten other people to join you and create a greater impact.”

There are, of course, some things Gisela would do differently, if she knew at the beginning what she knows now: “In the beginning, I misunderstood the competition – I thought people would be supportive of a social business. But Nutrivida was designed to be appealing on the supermarket shelves, and so other manufacturers were intensely competitive, to the extent that they undermined us by removing products from shelves. Also, we didn’t have a budget for a marketing campaign, and that cost us a lot.”

Equally, there are things that have gone right, of course. For instance, other manufacturers have bought into the idea of fortified products, exponentially increasing the impact of Gisela’s work.

And Gisela has a good relationship with her learning curve: “I’ve been learning what I don’t know, and finding out how to plug these gaps.” Also, that most fundamental of networks – her own children – has been brought along on the journey, and is supportive of the time she needs to take away from them. Their understanding of the greater good is an inspiration in itself to Gisela.

She knows that her mission – to eradicate under-nutrition and significantly reduce malnutrition in the region – is bold. But in the face of hunger, she sees it as the only ethical path. “Not one child should suffer,” she insists. As long as infants and children are hungry, or are deprived of the nutrition necessary to give them a fair start in life, Gisela and Nutrivida have urgent work to do.