Some business owners spend years building a company only to see it fail before it even takes off. How are you going to survive and cope? Will you just give up that dream business?

We all know that life as an entrepreneur is complex, but once you hit it, everything falls into place. Following the example of 27-year-old Thai entrepreneur Vanessa Techapichetvanich as she trusted the process and waited for the right moment to reap the benefits of her efforts.

Read through as Vanessa shares her story with the AHN community about building her passion-driven business Jamulogy, a 100% plant-based Indonesian herbal tonic. She discusses her struggles that almost made her give up, and what kept her going in order to reach her successes today.

Hitting Rock Bottom At The Very Start

2 years ago, I poured all my life’s savings into building Jamulogy. I raised quite a significant amount of funding through families and angel investors, built my first factory from scratch, and lost over $1M, due to the pandemic and an over-prioritization of FoodTech R&D.

I was devastated. This tremendous loss was beyond tragic. I was at the point where I wondered whether it was stupid for me to leave my high pay corporate job only to lose all my savings along with a sum of money from my investors.

What am I going to feed myself tomorrow? What will my employees do when they lose their job? How will I regain all the money I’ve lost? How will it affect women founders’ reputation in the startup ecosystem?

These questions and my desperation kept me wide awake at night for months. I was distressed, depressed, and hopeless. It was one of the lowest moments of my life.  

It also made me realize that when someone says “life as an entrepreneur is tough”, it is very much an understatement. You’re pretty much living on the edge 24/7, giving your 10000% best while success isn’t guaranteed.

What am I going to feed myself tomorrow? What will my employees do when they lose their job? How will I regain all the money I’ve lost? How will it affect women founders’ reputation in the startup ecosystem?

-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Shedding Some Light On Untapped Opportunities

I almost gave up. I would have.. had I not coincidentally connected with someone from AHN who is in the import and export business. One really good thing about this group is you have people from everywhere around the globe, and they are able to share insightful expertise on some stuff you’re not familiar with. 

I joined AHN more than a year ago when Facebook suggested the group to me. One day, I saw some people posted about expanding their food products to big retailers like Walmart, Wholefoods, and Costco, and from there, I got to connect with someone from San Francisco who works for a national distributor company in the US, and that’s how Jamulogy’s products entered the US market. 

This encounter shed some light on untapped opportunities and calls for a pivot in our business model. And I have been rebuilding since January. Despite the adversity I have been put through, this journey has been my greatest teacher yet.

I’m proud to share that Jamulogy is now available in 5 countries worldwide, including the US, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Jamulogy has also recently “graduated” from Southeast Asia’s biggest FoodTech accelerator program. 

Despite the adversity I have been put through, this journey has been my greatest teacher yet.

-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Transforming Traditional And Holistic Drinks Into Recipes Of Yummy 

Jamulogy was born out of my passion for a healthy lifestyle and my dream to bring Asian pride to the global stage. My mother is Indonesian, and I was introduced to Jamu when I was 5. The word “Jamu” itself means herbs in Indonesian. Sadly, our generation in Asia has overlooked these Indonesian herbal drinks that have over 1,300 years of history as they often associate herbal blends with older people.

Using modern food tech and all-natural non-GMO ingredients, we aim to recreate traditional Indonesian Jamu as a way to restore health to modern consumers. We are also committed to debunking the myth that healthy food tastes terrible.

Our concept is “From farm to bottle,” and we take every opportunity to support local farmers & growers around Asia. Each bottle contains only 40-80 calories without cane sugar or highly processed ingredients.

Going forward, we are also diverging our product offerings into herbal powder mix to cater to different consumer lifestyles across the world. 

Inspiration To Keep Going and Work Harder

What inspires me the most are our customers. I received all sorts of feedback from customers, both positive and negative. Whenever I hear our customers telling us how our products have created a value-adding impact on their health and life, I can’t help but smile to myself. 

But of course, we also received negative feedback and complaints, which I got a lot of value from as those have helped us improve, adjust, and create even better products for our customers. Truth be told, we have experimented with over 150 recipes. It was a struggle at the start, but “fall seven times, get up eight.” 

It’s the joy of being able to create a positive impact in society that keeps me going. 

It’s the joy of being able to create a positive impact in society that keeps me going. 

-Vanessa Techapichetvanich

Advice To Aspiring Entrepreneurs

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. 
2. Do not let your failures define who you are, but do learn from them. Every successful person I know has gone through several major failures before they get to where they are today.
3. Surround yourself with like-minded people. I can’t stress enough the importance of this. 

For me, the most important traits of being an entrepreneur are a growth mindset and adaptability. It’s not about who has the most brilliant ideas or who has the highest IQ, but more so who adapts the quickest to fit the market’s needs and customers’ expectations. 

Connect With Vanessa

You may check out our IG/FB at @drinkjamulogy.

If you’re just starting an F&B business or planning on exporting to Asia and want some advice, feel free to reach out as well. I’ll try my best to answer

Laxman Narasimhan, a seasoned executive with extensive experience in the consumer products industry, will succeed Howard Schultz as CEO of Starbucks.

Over the course of over 30 years, Narasimhan has led and advised several international consumer-facing companies. 

When he joined the consumer goods company Reckitt, it dealt with a cyber attack, a botched product launch, production problems, and a lackluster performance from its core brands. The company’s shareholders were very appreciative of Narasimhan’s three years as CEO, during which the company’s performance returned to levels that were considered to be sustainable.

Mellody Hobson, who chairs the board at Starbucks, also lauded Narasimhan as an “inspiring leader” who will contribute to the company’s expansion. Schultz also said that Narasimhan’s ideas would be fundamental to Starbucks as it builds on its past in this new era of greater well-being.

In the past, Narasimhan has also held executive positions at PepsiCo and McKinsey, in addition to his current role as a trustee at the Brookings Institute in Washington, District of Columbia. 

Narasimhan spent her younger years in India, but he came to the United States to earn a master’s degree and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania (MBA). He is also proficient in three Indian languages English, Spanish, and German. The Indian languages of Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam.

He will now be fully immersed in Starbucks over the next few months as he works and learns the plan that former CEO Schultz put in place during his brief third tenure at Starbucks. During this transitional period, Narasimhan will travel to various stores and factories to monitor the expansion and performance.

In a statement, Narasimhan remarked on how the company’s recent “reinvention” and investments in its partner and customer experiences had positioned it to meet the shifting demands of the present and prepare it for an even brighter future.

“Everyone has tried to tell our stories on film and television, but they are inaccurate because the producers, directors, and storytellers haven’t lived it.”  — Thuc Doan Nguyen described the other filmmakers who wanted to finance her upcoming film but were never satisfied with what they could do for her story.

Nguyen was eager to continue working on her script “Scent of the Delta,” a semifinalist at the 2020 film festival that will shortly be filmed. Carrie, a multiracial lady in New Orleans, is caught between two cultures. The narrative discusses anti-Asian prejudice, Asian sex workers’ misery, human trafficking victims, and Vietnamese patriarchal standards.

This gave Nguyen focus and purpose, and she became a screenwriter. Her first assignment in New Orleans showed her how misunderstood the Vietnamese population was. She cited her family’s terrifying refugee experiences and which fueled her desire and determination to do more.

Nguyen’s initial career path never involved writing. As a 3-year-old, she was entrusted to churchwomen, whom she refers to as her American grandmothers, because her family did not speak English when they immigrated to the United States. Her family relocated to southern Maryland with new employment opportunities awaiting her parents.

Since Nguyen had already made it to the semi-finals of the 2022 festival and Sundance Film Institute had expressed interest in the script, she decided to push forward with the project. She anticipated additional difficulties and major setbacks while adapting the screenplay into a film. Vietnamese-American producers had expressed interest in funding the film, but she knew they were missing the mark. 

She believes that the production team and actors cast by the producers will not complement her story. Because of this, she has made a life-changing choice. She declined a $5 million sponsorship offer for her film and decided to make it herself. As a result of her discernment, she was able to meticulously plan out the production of the film version of the story that she envisioned. 

Her film will be developed and directed by her team and a well-known production. She chose Le Ly Haslip, who wrote Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth,” and Maria Judice, a science-fiction film producer. 

Nguyen wants the audience to comprehend the genuine narrative behind her writing, as shared by people who experienced it. The film’s shooting is set to get underway in Louisiana in 2023.

This upcoming fall, she was also nominated for the 2022 Gold Fellowship Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences due to her continued perseverance and incredible creative work.