LVS LATAM Sustainable Food & Beverage

Our project seeks to reduce the fragility of the economic system of peasant communities in Latam that see their quality of life diminished due to the lack of tools. Therefore, our project seeks to support food&beverage startups to take advantage of the resources of the communities to 1)give access to the market and fair trade to ancestral foods, 2) promote health and good habits in consumers so that 3) both consumers and farmers can improve their quality of life in every way.

In Peru, 60% of the food produced is to feed the entire country. 23% of that percentage are from peasant communities. These suffer due to the fact that great gap between the price in the countryside and the city, the credits in the Agrobank and the null tech for the development of their crops.

To help them, we don't seek to work with them directly but through startups that require the products of the communities as inputs. Thus, we generate a productive economy.

Our solution is to develop a program focused on accelerating food and beverage startups that work with peasant and native communities in order to generate an impact in the community and that the startup grows at a commercial and social responsibility level, complying with the SDGs.

We have 3 target population that we have will help: 1) peasant communities that will make a leap in their growth with access to the market and dissemination of their products, 2) the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America of food & beverages, and 3) to consumers, because we promote good consumption habits to have better health.

The main problem that we seek to solve is the inequality and lack of opportunities that peasant communities suffer. We don't have the resources and talent to go up front to help them, but we do it with our expertise in accelerating startups. That's why we are committed to working with startups to instill the values of inclusion and sustainability so that they consume the resources produced by the communities and thus generate not only a commercial link but also a social and ecological one.

We chose the scale stage because we have experience working with digital startup ecosystems, but we want to be more efficient and have an impact on society. For that reason, we are going further back in the chain of entrepreneurship. We are focusing on starting operations from the entrepreneur's contact with supplies and, in this case, the suppliers are the peasant communities. Here we discover the problems that we want to solve by having the startups as an intermediary.

Our solution is innovative because it goes beyond just speeding up a food or beverage startup. Our project seeks to go further and add value to links in the chain that most don't notice and that have generate a change and impact on them. We are committed to a sustainable society where our startups not only add value but also set an example for the growth and improvement of sectors that are invisible to many.

As a focus on our startups, our project serves 4 startups that are about 20 people in total. The startups in turn are linked to about 5 to 6 communities in total. An average community has between 50 to 150 people.

Therefore, we are talking about an impact of between 70 to 200 people.
In 5 years, we want to reach the impact goal of 50 startups (250 people) and about 300 people per community. That generates an impact of about 10 thousand people

1. Number of sustainable projects by startups per community.
2. Percentage of investment allocated by startup to work with communities
3. Percentage of raw supply by startups from sustainable harvests
4. Number of families benefited bu our project

Total team: 65

Full time: 4 (Fernando Lago, Fernanda Salazar, Michell Anyosa, Pelayo Maojo)

Part-time: 40 (LIQUID VENTURE STUDIO Staff)

Mentors: 21

We are an interdisciplinary team that has experience in service design, lean startup, product development and working with communities. Some of our members have worked with communities to achieve a change in their lifestyle using tech as a tool.

At the level of equity, we seek to have an inclusive and equitable team, which is why we have 2 women who not only provide gender quota but also provide a lot of value in the development of the project. Similarly, we seek that our startups work with communities because they can spread their ancestral wealth and improve their quality of life.

We apply for SOLVE because we want to have an impact on all strata of society. We want from the producer to the consumer to feel the impact and the improvement of their quality of life in various aspects.

Based on our experience, the most difficult thing is monitoring KPI's startups, especially if they are related to sustainable development because they are more difficult to measure by communities and startups.

We would like to associate or form alliances with ministries or entities in the region that work or have communities mapped so that we can have faster and more direct contact with them. In the same way, have alliances with institutions such as MIT that provide us with the talent to insert them in supporting the Latin American entrepreneurial ecosystem and working with communities. They can also help us with data collection and information processing at the regional level.

We believe that our solution allows the growth of rural communities and the entrepreneurial ecosystem of food and beverages in Latin America.