FMCG Innovations and Trends by Sophia Nadur

65% of high-potential start-ups fail as a result of conflict among co-founders or between founders & other members of the management team.  In a  Financial Times  article, founders - including Tg Green Tea's co-founder Sophia Nadur, discuss why agreeing a ‘pre-nup’ can avoid a cocktail of conflicts. https://www.ft.com/content/2e5f512a-88df-11e7-afd2-74b8ecd34d3b

It’s #WorldObesityDay today. 2/3 of Britons are overweight or obese, up from 1/2 just 20 years ago. I am one of those statistics but am doing my best to change things, for me and for communities here and abroad. A research physician & I invested our life savings to develop a truly healthier drink to help wean us off our sugar habit. It’s better than virtually all of the new drinks offered by big companies to retailers.  WATCH this 1 min World Obesity Day VIDEO However, a big UK supermarket told us yesterday that unless we spent £££££s with them, we would not be stocked. Despite all the promises made to be more responsible, retailers are continuing to fill shelves with certain food & drink, simply because big companies have deeper pockets. These restrictive practices happen not just in the UK but all over the world.  This plea is not about a drink I want to promote. There will be other startups with better products too. How much money do retailers, manufactu...

Tg Green Tea co-founder, Sophia Nadur, in Singapore discussing how to harness the goodness of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda wellness ingredients in creating beverages that folks want. Read her interview with Gary Scattergood, Editor-in-Chief at William Reed Business Media Ltd, Food Asia, in NutraIngredients Asia. http://www.nutraingredients-asia.com/Manufacturers/Functional-beverages-in-Asia-Start-ups-need-to-redress-the-health-balance For more info, please connect with me via LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophianadur/

The global ready-to-drink tea market reached 37 billion liters in 2016: up 40% since 2011, and market consultancy Zenith Global predicts this impressive growth is set to continue with global consumption expected to reach 45 billion liters by 2021 (growing 7% per annum). Increased consumption has been driven by consumers’ rising health awareness, with RTD teas offering an attractive alternative to carbonated soft drinks. In Asia – by far the biggest market for RTD teas – functional benefits are also a key characteristic of the market. RTD teas will continue to evolve with exotic flavors and more sophisticated offerings. But the category will also face increased scrutiny over its health positioning, with some RTD teas containing as much sugar as carbonated soft drinks. Tg green tea, a new British brew, is set to take on global behemoths in the race to healthify the category. www.drinktg.com

(c) 2012 Convergence Alimentaire blog image I cut my FMCG marketing teeth  at Unilever and ended my full-time global food & drink industry career at Kraft/Mondelez. I now run a  healthier drinks startup  business ( drinktg.com ) alongside a global innovation consultancy where I work as an  "extrapreneur"  supporting companies wanting to remake their portfolios to better fit emerging consumer needs for healthier products......so I am perhaps in a unique position to give a point of view.  If you are Dutch or British, you  feel closer culturally to Unilever  and few people living in the UK will have forgotten Kraft's poor treatment of people & assets post  Cadbury's acquisition . However, the reality is that the  vision and values of both companies are not so dissimilar  and both are facing the same  fundamental shifts  in consumer behaviour & needs in relation to "big FMCG/CPG" brands in both developed a...

Hua  (my co-founder) and I have been crowdfunding on  Tesco Backit  for the past few weeks. It's been a great opportunity to share with folks who already know and love our innovative drink concept.....and loads of folks who never heard of Tg green tea - or us -before. The crowdfunding platform itself is new -  the first of its kind by a global retailer (Tesco) -  and focused on supporting emerging food & drink brands raise funds to scale up and get ready to list (hopefully) in a Top 5 global retailer! The campaign closes on  7th November  so please allow me to make a short, direct appeal to you to support our crowdfunding campaign. With every pledge we are able to deliver our drinks to more and more cafes, delis, workplaces and charities all across Britain - and to ensure sales support is on hand to fulfill orders once more folks have sampled our drinks. Please may I ask you to make a pledge of £25, £50, or £100 today.  We will say "tha...

My mission to fight for better food & drink on store shelves  drove me to create Tg. Getting the drink in-store with Tesco in the UK is just the start. This crowdfunding campaign has stirred up strong interest by another major retailer as well as a number of cafe chains. Enquiries have come in from the US, France, Germany, the UAE, China, Japan, Chile, the Netherlands, and the Caribbean regarding selling Tg in those markets. But I cannot make Tg a success on my own. I need your help which is why I am here, asking you to make a campaign pledge. Bob Beveridge , a former colleague at Mars, experienced NED & Chartered Accountant, made a sizeable pledge very early in the campaign. He then asked to try out Tg green teas. He thought the drinks were delicious and something really new and different (after doing his own in-store and other research). He was so moved by Tg's mission that he reached out to offer his help as an advisor and ...

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is one of the best “preventative medicine” steps we can take. The founder of medicine, Hippocrates, said in 400 B.C. “ Let medicine be thy food and let food be thy medicine ” and for centuries doctors,  dietitians, nutritionists, and nutritional therapists  everywhere have talked about the role that food plays in health and how you feel on a day to day basis. Dr Hua He  and I are two co-founders of a British based startup that is on a mission to encourage healthier lifestyles across Britain and the world. Hua has worked for many years in the medical field to research and develop new drugs that can make sick people better (or at least ease some of the symptoms of illness). She was born in China and grew up with the traditional health & wellness knowledge of Green tea and other fruit & botanicals that had become part of everyday life in the “Middle Kingdom” for over 4,000 years. Green tea was known since anc...