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combinations, and see how it tastes.”
A tight-knit team of food technologists are in charge of developing flavours, which makes them “a vital component” of the BioFoodLab organisation, Shifrina says.
Their concoctions have included figs with cinnamon, banana with peanuts, apple with carrots, cranberries with almonds, and lime with hazelnuts.
When Shifrina was drawing up plans for her operation, she was thinking
of Bite as an adult food. But customer feedback indicated that children were big fans, too. Shifrina capitalised on this opportunity by creating a separate line for kids, known as Biteys.
BioFoodLab got a promotional bump not long after Bite sales started when Nike’s running clubs in Russia approached her with a partnership idea in October 2013. The clubs said that if BioFoodLab would provide bars to those competing in their events, they would promote the brand. Shifrina knew a good deal when she saw it, immediately saying yes. Another early publicity boon came when Russia’s edition of Forbes magazine named Bio- FoodLab its Startup of the Year in 2013.
The Nike and Forbes ties underscored Shifrina's belief that promotion is a
key ingredient of a company’s success. One of her brassiest promotional moves came on a day when Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited
Skolkovo Innovation Park, a business- incubator complex he had started. Shifrina waltzed her way through his security contingent to tell him about her start-up. She left with a photo showing her standing next to the prime minister, who was grasping a Bite bar.
Another promotional coup was a tie- in with Disney’s two new Star Wars films, “Rogue One” and “The Force Awakens”. BioFoodLab produced special Star Wars packages for the bars, which it sold in stores nationwide. The campaign went viral, with con- sumers sharing thousands of photo- graphs of their bars on social media.
She was delighted when the organisers of the 2017 London Marathon voiced an interest in working with Bite. Not only did the marathon’s programme list it, but it was also in the goodie bag that the thousands of contestants received.
Partly because of her time in the West, Shi- frina was determined to have BioFoodLab display the social consciousness that the world’s most renowned companies do.
Among its philanthropic activities are supporting the Naked Heart Foundation’s annual Running Hearts charity run, which raises funds for families raising children with disabilities.
This year promises to be a momentous one in BioFoodLab’s expansion, Shifrina
said. To start with, it has begun laying the groundwork for entering the US market. The Russian Export Centre gave a boost to the company’s efforts by naming it
the country’s 2016 Exporter of the Year.
Another important goal is expanding Bite’s presence in Europe from the current handful of countries to continent-wide. Shifrina's team is also gearing up for a major expansion of BioFoodLab’s fledgling presence in China and Saudi Arabia. She’s thinking about Africa as well – for two reasons. First, it is a huge market. And, second, it has a lot of raw materials for its bars. “Sub-Saharan Africa has the chance to become one of the world’s leading nut and dried fruit suppliers, if not the big- gest,” she said. “It already supplies 40%
of the world’s cashews, generating income for about 10mn people.
BioFoodLab is already having in-house discussions about a manufacturing operation there to supply its product to Africa and beyond,” she added.
In addition to 2017 being an important international-expansion year, Bio- FoodLab is on track to achieve a major financial milestone: RUB1bn in sales ($17mn). Not bad for a company that has gone from a graduate student’s dream to a profitable and growing inter- national operation in just five year.
Russian internet giant Yandex and Sberbank team up in $0.5bn joint venture
Vadim Dumesh in Paris
R
ussia's internet services giant Yandex and largest state-owned bank Sberbank announced
Dubbed by some as the “Amazon of Rus- sia,” the retail banking giant Sberbank is set to invest about $500mn into the joint venture that values Yandex.Market
at RUB60bn ($1bn). The terms of the agreement are non-binding and still need to secure regulatory approval.
The platform already attracts more than 19mn desktop and laptop users each month, according to East-West Digital News (EWDN), giving the partners access to over 20,000 domestic and international merchants and 150mn product offerings.
they are creating a joint e-commerce venture based on the Yandex.Market marketplace platform, the companies announced on August 9.
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