Powders power: LVL Life’s superfood blends ride e-commerce, plant-based and COVID-19 waves
The firm was established just last year in June, and after initially starting by selling superfood ingredient powders, moved on to formulate superfood drink mixes after being told by consumers that they wanted something ‘more convenient’.
“We now have three blends, all formulated from plant-based superfood ingredients, all vegan-friendly and all formulated to meet specific functions and needs for a person throughout the day,” LVL Life Co-Founder Avinash Aswani told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“Powders in a sachet are our preferred format as not only is it convenient, it can provide a high density of nutrients in a concentrated form – for example, the goodness of 7kg of moringa can be gotten from 1kg of moringa powder. It is also versatile and enables smoothie enthusiasts, a large part of our audience, to customise their smoothies according to the nutrients they want easily.”
LVL Life currently has three main superfood drink powder blends: Raw Focus+ for energy and productivity, which contains matcha for caffeine and L-theanine to drive energy, brahmi for focus and moringa for nutrients; Natural Immunity+ with orange powder for vitamin C, turmeric for anti-infammation and baobab for fibre; and Plant Protein+ with pea and brown rice proteins which contain anmino acids complementary to one another, maca root for energy and ashwaganda for endurance.
“When formulating Raw Focus+ for example, we were thinking: What can we provide in addition to what a cup of coffee, which only helps with focus but not with nutrients, can? And that’s how we’ve innovated and decided to use not only matcha to provide a up of coffee’s worth of caffeine (85mg), but also other nutrients,” said Aswani.
“In terms of ingredients, we’re definitely focused on being plant-based and showing others that plant-based ingredients are enough to help fuel any life task by providing focus, helping with immunity and gut health, and more.”
“The blends will definitely tick the interest of those who are willing to take that additional step for health, but we are not limiting our target audience to this.”
As such, LVL Life sells its powder blends in some physical outlets such as specialty cafes and yoga studios, where the audience is already in a healthy mindset and, but its primary mode of sales is via e-commerce, e.g. its own website and other online retailers such as Redmart.
“We saw sales of Natural Immunity+ doing better during the recent COVID-19 outbreak due to the rising demand for immunity boosters and supplements, and we’re just glad and fortunate that our retail format is primarily via e-commerce which has proven super-resilient even during these times,” said Aswani.
“There was a bit of a supply chain issue at the beginning, as we import from countries worldwide including Japan, India, Africa, Peru, Madagascar in addition to sourcing locally, but thankfully this disruption was not for too long and we had just gotten stuff in before the crisis hit, so we weren’t affected too badly.”
Riding on the plant-based and e-commerce trend waves to tide through the crisis, Aswani added that the aim for LVL Life has always been to become a global brand with global reach, and it already ships worldwide from Singapore.
“We’ve sent a lot to Indonesia, where health is a rising focus as can be evidenced by the establishment of many superfood stores and salad outlets. Australia is another place, and Thailand too,” he said.
NPD and innovation
Moving forward, the aim for the firm is to continue to formulate new superfood powder blends by ‘understanding a person’s day and designing based on their daily functional needs’.
“I can’t reveal too much now, but two things we’re looking closely at are a stress relief and calming mix, as well as a daily greens blend,” said Aswani.
“We’ve had a lot of customers surface to us that they don’t eat enough green or leafy vegetables, and expect that this will be able to help them.”
