Learn about the story of Angela Ursic and YEMA: the startup that wants to make all Mexicans love taking care of themselves YEMA is an emerging proposal that seeks to revolutionize the way we do the supermarket, with a proposal of healthy food at a good price.
By Entrepreneur Staff Edited by Eduardo Scheffler Zawadzki
This article was translated from our Spanish edition.
Angela Ursic Bedoya was born in Bolivia and studied a master's degree in Science and Strategic Management at the School of Higher Business Studies in Paris. She held the position of product director at LINIO, one of the most important e-commerce companies in Latin America, and later founded YEMA alongside her partners, René and Laurene.
The proposal emerged in 2018 with a focus on electronic commerce, seeking to create a digital supermarket with healthy options, clean labels and affordable prices , with the purpose of facing conventional supermarkets. It seeks to educate the consumer so that their decision before choosing their food is more conscious and responsible.
YEMA has a presence on most delivery platforms, such as: Rappi , Uber Eats and Amazon. The platform also has physical sales spaces. As explained on the official website, the idea for the startup arose while consuming one of the many products that we usually buy at the supermarket: peanuts. "As we ate some simple 'premium' peanuts, we realized that the ingredients were a thousand strange things that we didn't understand. How was it possible that these things were sold as 'peanuts' and, above all, as 'premium'? That's how we decided to make honest products, with honest ingredients and clear labels. Because only then can you be sure that what you are consuming is not something harmful, don't you think?
The focus mainly when the project was just starting was focused on physical stores, as a result of the pandemic, virtual sales increased abruptly, a circumstance that forced them to change the brand's focus and give priority to electronic commerce.
Angie is a woman with a clear vision within her company, an example to follow, since the creation of a startup entails challenges that can be difficult to deal with; In this case, Angela shares that the main challenges: have been the creation of a physical product, the creation of content for social networks and the development of operations processes, because when starting out, building the foundations always entails quite a bit of difficulty in order to create a sustainable system. and automated.
Ursic recommends that women interested in entrepreneurship feel sure of themselves and always dream big.
Among his future plans, he highlights continuing to open stores; but not open to the public but rather centers where they operate for home deliveries, and continue to encourage the customer to consume healthy products.
