With a decade-long career in risk management in London and Luxembourg, Ning Kong was looking for a challenge when she started exploring angel investing. Not long after she founded her own startup Al-Vita.
Interested in supplements, Ning Kong started looking into this market and found that it was lacking functional, yet delicious options.
“I realised that you don’t get what you pay for in terms of supplements,” she says. “Some of them are also very expensive. In some cases, you may take them for three months and you don’t see any impact on your body or health.”
That’s when she decided to start a business in the industry and create supplements that taste delicious, are easy to take, and also provide pharmaceutical strength.
“It’s not only the good quality ingredients that are important but also how they are combined, the different ingredients together. Some vitamins need to be combined for your body to absorb them,” she explains, recalling the extensive research she conducted to familiarise herself with the manufacturing process, the numerous industry conferences she attended and the many specialists she met with.
“In Germany and France, there is a very high demand for supplements, whereas in Luxembourg there is a need to educate the market,”
Ning Kong, Founder of Al-Vita
“Choco Hero”
Working with top nutrition professionals, Ning Kong created Al-Vita in 2022 and launched her first product “Choco Hero”, in February 2023, to support a healthy lifestyle. The chocolate bites contain 14 vitamins and minerals, as well as probiotics and the Q10 coenzyme.
She explains that chocolate is prebiotic and acts as a good delivery system for vitamins, enhancing nutrient absorption. Unlike tablet or capsule supplements, “Choco Hero” bites don’t require water or to be taken alongside food.
We have created a revolutionary product,” she says, adding that “Choco Hero” provides customers with “a daily nutritional boost in one mouth-watering dark chocolate bite”.
Like many founders, Ning Kong started her business with the minimum capital, relying on private funds to test the product she had long envisioned.
To bring “Choco Hero” to the market, Ning Kong currently works with a lab, a chocolate manufacturer, as well as a fulfilment centre that handles the orders. The product is made in the European Union and contains nutrient reference values which indicate the daily amount of nutrients required for good health.
Initially, one of the major challenges that Ning Kong faced was to convince the chocolate manufacturer to work with her. “In order to make the product, they had to change how they produced the chocolate. They had to create a mould and they had to work with the lab that would send all the active ingredients to mix into the chocolate,” she explains.
Positive feedback
Six months after launching the product online, Ning Kong confirms that customer feedback has been very positive and retention proves high. Furthermore, she has received some interest in the product from distributors based in Asia.
Targeting women aged 25 to 40, interested in a healthy lifestyle, Ning Kong is currently working on making the company website multilingual and intends to further raise the company’s profile in Luxembourg, including by finding partners to sell “Choco Hero” in domestic shops.
“In Germany and France, there is a very high demand for supplements, whereas in Luxembourg there is a need to educate the market,” she says.
Excited about the future, Ning Kong reveals that a co-founder with a strong marketing background will be joining Al-Vita early next year. Once the team is strengthened, she intends to focus on product development and on the educational aspect of nutrition, which is particularly important to her. In addition, a second Al-Vita product, a booster, is set to come to market at the beginning of 2024.
“Prepare to be flexible because sometimes you have fixed ideas. Your company will never end in the form that it started”.
Ning Kong, Founder of Al-Vita
Personalisation is the future
In the long run, Ning Kong would like for Al-Vita to offer personalised nutrition and home testing results as part of the service. For this, she dreams of, one day, running her own office, lab and manufacturing facilities.
“Customers would go to the website, fill in a questionnaire and receive suggestions of what vitamin supplements to take. Based on these findings, we would print out the product with 3D printing,” she explains, adding that, at a later stage, home testing could also be offered to produce tailor-made supplements for customers.
Looking back on her entrepreneurial experience with Al-Vita, Ning Kong, who still works full-time in the financial sector, believes that her corporate background and attention to detail are major strengths for the nutrition industry.
When asked for advice in turning an idea into a company, Ning Kong brings up the need to start lean and be patient. She then emphasises the importance of networking “to get more ideas through the exchange and get introduced to relevant contacts”. The third ingredient in her “recipe for success” is flexibility.
“Prepare to be flexible because sometimes you have fixed ideas. Your company will never end in the form that it started”.
