Entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment have been going hand in hand for some time. And that’s great. After all, many women are willing to get good ideas out of the paper and encourage important changes in attitude in different niche markets. 

That’s what Ana Tovazi and Marina Salama have been doing for 14 years. Ana has a degree in Engineering, with a Specialization in Marketing and an MBA in Business Management. Marina holds a degree in Biological Sciences, with a Specialization in Business Administration and an MBA in Economics and Health Management.

They used to work together in the same company until they united to be entrepreneurs in the healthy food industry with the proposal to awaken manufacturers to the new consumption behaviors of Brazilians and to create more natural and preservative-free products.

Brazil is the fourth country in the world ranking for healthy food and beverage consumption, according to a survey by Euromonitor in 2019, totaling US$35 billion in revenue.

This highly promising scenario caught the attention of the pair of friends, who found in the rich Brazilian biodiversity the right ingredients to put into practice the entrepreneurship idea.

 

In entrepreneurship, the key is to take it one step at a time

First, the Blue Macaw Flora (BMF) project was born in August 2007, a company that extracts all the ingredients necessary to create 100% healthy inputs from Brazilian flora as a way to replace the artificial ingredients so present in food, beverages, and cosmetics made by the manufacturers.

BMF had an industrial vision and focused on product development using its own structure. It was there that Ana and Marina created the fruit bits and the Frootiva brand. 

The small pieces of dehydrated apple covered with a crunchy layer of fruit were marketed to end customers and to companies interested in innovative ingredients or betting on the private label segment, another important niche market. There was a manufacturing unit for the production of bits and a team to manage the business. 

Highs and lows over the years have resulted in a lot of learning for the pair and there was a need to restructure the business sustainably. After much market research, the decision was to focus on the expertise of delivering an excellent service with assured products with the best quality and food safety standards. Thus Frootiva® Co was born at the end of 2019.

The new company brought the expertise of the corporate and entrepreneurial world. The entire production part was outsourced and the bits gained a new brand, FrootNibs. Blue Macaw Flora maintained its activities, but started to work together with Frootiva® Co: BMF focused on the Brazilian market and Frootiva® Co in the international market, embracing good business opportunities in the west and east.

And the winds of entrepreneurship are taking Ana and Marina to a new restructuring: Frootiva® Co and Blue Macaw Flora will continue to keep an eye on exports. But they will start to pay attention to the healthy food market in Brazil, as a way to expand the business and awaken local companies to the need of using fewer preservatives and more natural inputs for the creation of their products.

This recent change was triggered by the potential that Brazil has to grow even more in this segment of healthy food and beverages in the coming years.

Besides fruit bits, the companies develop lines of dehydrated fruit and vegetable powder and dry extracts. All following the highest standards of quality.

 

Women Entrepreneurship in Brazil: a Mix of Sweat and Persistence

Ana and Marina took their ideas off the paper and did not stop improving them. But they said: it is very difficult to be an entrepreneur in Brazil. 

“It is bureaucratic. Our country has a complex and costly tax system and difficult and very expensive access to credit. We live constantly in an uncertain present and future,” Ana Tovazi said. “It is difficult to plan, and now we have this inflation causing everything to increase in price in an uncontrolled way and complicating the life of any entrepreneur.”

And if taking the entrepreneurship path in Brazil is already a challenge, the obstacles are even greater for women, as Ana mentioned. “In addition to managing the demands that fall to every entrepreneur, we have to face prejudice and a suspicious, discredited look from a macho country.”

However, the businesswoman assures us this has never shaken either her or Marina, who have moved on doing and giving their best. According to them, to be an entrepreneur, a woman needs to be a warrior, bold, intelligent, resilient, secure, autonomous in decisions, able to face challenges and has to believe, fight, and not give up.

“Today we have several examples of successful women who are paving the way and encouraging entrepreneurship in our country, including Ana Fontes, Sonia Hess, Livia Pretti, and Alessandra Oggioni. This must multiply! We have to support each other, we are very strong and capable!”, concludes Ana Tovazi.