STARTUP NEWS We continue our series of startup companies who are working at Ideon Innovation. The purpose of this series is to introduce the startups to the other companies at Ideon to see if there is a possibility of working together and doing business with each other. Kind of an electronic networking.
Company name:Â AgVital
Lars Norrman founder of AgVital
Hello Lars, can you tell us more about what inspired you to be an entrepreneur and a bit more about your background?
I have worked many years within large corporations like Alfa Laval and Tetra Pak, mostly as a General Director abroad. I helped companies in their change process, supporting them in mapping their challenges and turning them around.
The reason I decided to create AgVital is that when I saw the global food industry and talked with customers I noticed that there was a lot of sugar and starch involved in many foods. Hence, I started thinking about why we are not making better alternatives, but I realized that the market doesn’t have people’s health as their primary goal. Hence, I decided to try and change it on my own by starting AgVital.
Can you tell us a bit more about what AgVital is and does?
AgVital is a digital platform that will help individuals to unconsciously make the right food choices. The digital platform can help people that want to change their eating habits or those that just want to continue eating healthy and make the right food choices. The platform will be personalized to you and provide you with the best possible nutrition information and advice that applies to you. Moreover, AgVital are planning to make a direct connection between the farmers and the consumers at a later stage of our company’s development.
What have been your biggest struggles until now?
When I worked in General Management, everything was much easier and faster because I had a management team and good resources in the company. Together we could make things happen rather quickly, because they were experts in their field. Now I do not have any of that, hence if I want to learn something I need to do my own research and find my own resources. Hence, it is taking much longer to build the foundation and knowledge of the company and only after those steps can I start to implement the business model and launch the product.
You are part of the incubator at Ideon Innovation; what has that given you?
I think it is a fantastic place, because of the network that it provides, which I think is very important. Pelle, Ola and Kristoffer are great and I get a lot of support from them and others with advice and connections to financial support in and around the park. Whatever kind of resources and network you need, you can find it here. For example, during the Tuesday breakfast I meet so many interesting people that are helping me to bring my business forward and I have even found future partners and customers. It is a great meeting place and a lot of knowledgeable and interesting people that like sharing ideas are here.
What is in the future for AgVital?
We will develop our value proposition and segment our market. After that we will have a beta version of our platform to test it out. Hopefully after that it should take off on a global scale, which has been my goal from the beginning.
In order to contact Lars Norrman you can email him at norrman.lars@gmail.com , call +46 709 361000 or visit him at Ideon Innovation
