Baïa Food Co. is a Spanish startup that wants to improve the quality of life of people in our society. They mainly research on exotic fruits as a source of bioactive ingredients and develop functional food products with high added value. Among the startup’s key activities is the development of an ethical and sustainable value chain of a New Food from which a unique ingredient is extracted in nature with nutraceutical, food and cosmetic applications. The company currently markets a line of organic superfoods that come from small local crops where the different botanical species are endemic with the aim of positioning their brand “baïa” by opening different marketing channels.

In our conversation, Loan talked about the main difficulties they encountered while developing their business, especially as young entrepreneurs, and explained how they managed to overcome them. He also spoke about the evolution of the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem from when they started about 8 years ago until now and the support they had from the Israeli ecosystem that was already more mature. Regarding areas that can be improved, Loan believes that private investment and venture capital still have a long way to go in Spain.

In addition, since we have seen a great advance in AgriFoodTech in the last few years, we asked the co-founder about what that term means to him and how he would define it. According to him, “AgriFoodTech is a modern invention to bring together in a single term the entire food value chain (specifically plant-based) and the technology that is integrated into it to improve aspects of it. Agrifood covers from farm to table, in the traditional model of food production. The tech dimension refers to innovation in the chain, using and developing new technological tools that optimize chain management, improve productivity or the end consumer’s experience, create new and unlikely products, etc.”

You can find the full interview in Spanish here.