Food & Beverage Startup Expo

Laura Mimoun

Kaleidoscope

Mike Stevans

Peppersmith

After a 8-year stint as head of operations and country manager for Innocent Drinks, Mike setup his own venture 9 years ago, with a shared vision to shake up the confectionery industry with better made products that taste good and do you good. They put their 100% even in a product like mints and gums by keeping it 100% natural with no added sugar. They sold their 10 millionth pack just in 2017!

Emma Grant

Nakd Bars

Having worked as the Director at SBG Aurora where she consulted clients like Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Emma joined the founding team of Nakd and Trek bars as Sales Director 9.5 years back. She has built the business grounds up to ~59 million pound and has seen the journey through inception.

Ines Hermida

Macacha

Formly Head of Health & Beauty at Whole Foods in the UK, Ines provided a vision that updated a hippy department to suit contemporary consumers. Focusing on adapting the US model to the UK market, Ines was responsible for all categories and brands in three sub-departments: nutritional Supplements, Beauty and Homewares (comprising in total and over 200 brands). Now, Ines is working on the future of nutritional supplements at Macacha!

Paritosh Bhandar

Tipple Brands Limited, UK.

Paritosh is a management graduate and a multiple award winning marketer. He has over 15 years of executive experience with SAB Miller, Levi’s, Illva Saronno JV, Sony and Bennett Coleman where he managed many an illustrious brands such as Peroni, Foster’s, Sony, Artic, Dockers, PlayStation and Levi’s. Last year, he launched his own brand HAPPYDOWN™ in the UK. Within just 3 months of operations, his Crafted Sparkling Cocktail Brand was launched in Tesco with a national listing. Within a short span of one year, HappyDown™ has won a few coveted international awards such as Silver at the Global Spirits Masters 2017.  An inductee into the prestigious Global Entrepreneur Program of the UK Government, Department of International Trade and a Virgin Step-Up Alumni. Trivia : Paritosh stayed in numerous AirBnB’s in the UK for almost a year and yet managed to launch his brand out of a room and a suitcase. 

Julia Kessler

Co-founder

Nix & Kix

Julia is a startup enthusiast. Having cofounded a business that connected volunteers with social organizations and having mentored product startups, she co-founded Nix and Kix - low-cal low-sugar soft drinks. Have won multiple awards like Great Taste 2018, Zero alcohol award 2016, Best new beverage concept award 2015 and more. 

Vishal Sodha

Founder

DRGN Superdrinks

Director at Citi for 10 years, Managing Director at Credit Suisse and Nomura and now founder of DRGN Drinks! Just an year old and already the finalists in 3 categories at the prestigious FoodBev World Beverage Innovation Awards.

Kate Prince

Ancient + Brave

Rebekah Hall

CEO & Founder

Botanic Lab

Founder of Botanic Lab, the innovative drinks business making waves in the UK market, with products taking over the shelves of Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Ocado, Eat, Gail’s and many more retailers. Rebekah followed her studies in economics with a successful 10-year career as a city corporate financier. She has a tough and pragmatic approach to business, developed and fine tuned in a challenging and sometimes ruthless environment. She is a firm believer that one of the key personality traits required in a successful entrepreneur is an abundance of resilience, preferably accompanied by a sense of humour. As a somewhat unexpected counter to this, Rebekah is also an experienced yoga teacher, having practiced traditional ashtanga yoga for many years. She knows the health and wellbeing sector inside out, both as a consumer and also a business owner, but is unashamedly cynical about it.

Philip Udeh

Brain Fud

An LSE graduate with over 10 years of charity, social enterprise and start up experience. Living with Sickle Cell himself, and as a busy professional, overcoming fatigue is a daily challenge. Baffled by the lack of healthy energy drinks out there, Philip started making energy smoothies with his own nutri-bullet. The idea for Brain Füd was born! No Monsters, No Bull, just Natural Energy!