The winner was Hiki Foods, a university venture by Universidad del Pacífico students that manufactures cricket-based flour to be used as a nutritional supplement for athletes and people looking for a healthy lifestyle and balanced diet. Gustavo Lobatón, Andrés Quesada, Jojo Ramírez and Juan Luis Salinas are part of the entrepreneurial team that identified a nutritional factor in insects, ideal for combating nutrition problems worldwide.
For Jojo Ramírez, there is a whole market for entrepreneurship: "Today, universities are inviting students to start their own businesses. You have to take the risk. If you want to have your own business you must read a lot and know what the market needs."
This startup will represent Peru in the BMC global final to be held in May at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, the mecca of world technology, for prizes that exceed $ 150 thousand dollars.
The International Business Model Competition (BMC) is a competition that places startups in the initial phase of the entrepreneurship process. At this stage, startups require the active identification and validation of numerous crucial business model assumptions, rather than the simple drafting of a static plan.
In the final, held in Peru on December 20, there were a total of 40 teams selected from which Hiki Foods was chosen to represent our country. In total 600 universities competed worldwide.
The winner was awarded $ 15,000 in seed money to start its startup and a spot in the global final. The star guest of the evening was Paul Ahlstrom, a world-renowned venture capital investor and Founder of Alta Ventures, Latin America's largest venture capital fund. He is also author of the best seller "Nail it, then Scale it".
Where did the idea come from?
In 2050, meat consumption will not be sustainable. According to the United Nations, introducing insects into our food pyramid is a good idea to face reality: the demand for protein foods in diets will not only not decrease in the coming decades, but will grow driven by population growth and middle class development in giants like China or India.
They all have a high nutritional value. Some contain as many proteins as meat or fish.
There are also economic reasons. To produce a kilo of insects, two kilos of food are needed, while cattle, for example, require eight kilos of food per kilo of meat.
"We were in charge of the entire process, from breeding and feeding the crickets, to industrializing the product. We feed them with carrot and engordina (protein, fat and fiber) so that they develop in a natural way and are more nutritious when consuming them," explains Jojo Ramirez.