Filipino sets up plant-based cleaning products start-up in UK | The Final Word

philippine entrepreneur has found success all the way in the uk with a startup that offers plant-based cleaning products made safer for the family we talk about nimble babies with founder and ceo vaughn c as he joins us now from london vaughan thank you so much for joining us on the final word hello good evening rico and good evening good evening to all your viewers so vote nimble babies products are available now across 900 tesco and sainsbury's stores how does it feel as an entrepreneur that your brand is sold in the uk's top supermarkets oh it feels amazing rico um you know it's it's i've always had this dream of starting up my own business um and uh you know i came from the philippines um coming over to the uk and i i felt like you know it would just be a far-fetched dream for someone uh like me with no real connections uh in the business world here in the uk but yeah i'm just very happy to have been able to get be be given this opportunity to um yeah to not just invent my products myself but also um you know sell it to the top supermarkets here in the uk so it's an absolute honor indeed an absolute honor and my goodness the top uh uh uk grocers and of course you graduated as a chemist from the university of the philippines worked with the local uh multinational group by unilever moved to the uk what made you decide to leave the corporate life and start your own business oh um i've always um yeah you know as a young child you know i've always been exposed to uh business and and onto entrepreneurship um i even remembered you know in class i would sell things to my classmates you know i would buy for example pad paper or or pens that i would sell to my uh to my classmates at retail price to make a bit of margin so yeah it's really really coming from that uh yeah natural inclination towards uh yeah creating value from you know from something small and and and creating value to uh for for other people um and yeah i've just yeah after after years of working in a multinational company i felt like i i felt like i needed something more and thankfully i've been given this opportunity to just you know jump ship um and be able to um yeah have a go at my dream of starting my own business oh yeah indeed you really jump ship from the corporate life a monthly salaried man a steady income and now you start really from scratch um was it also risky and and scary uh to start up a business in a foreign land in the uk oh definitely it's it it what is very scary is the fact that yeah you just don't have the safety net the same safety net that you might have uh when when you're starting a business in your home country um yeah so for example i didn't have uh the real connections to people in business here in the uk um there was you know every every single time there's always a chance that you your business might fail yeah um and yeah and just not having that network and that support even your family is not here to support you so um it is a very scary experience but um yeah uh thankfully um things have worked out for us and we've been able to really capitalize on on the various opportunities that were presented to us along the way um and uh here we are now uh we're we're producing more products we're developing new products and selling to more supermarkets here in the uk you are indeed a very brave entrepreneur and you have made it in the uk but what made you decide to manufacture non-toxic plant-based cleaning products it all started from my chat with my sister a few years ago so my sister was the one who told me about her issues around washing her baby's bottles and from that conversation i had with her i realized that oh i can probably come up with a cleaning product that will actually solve that issue without using harsh chemicals so and that's how i ended up creating that first product milkbuster that you can see now and from that work that i've done on milkbuster i got exposed to the world of parenting and how much mess children make all the time and i felt like there is a gap here in the market uh for a for a range of plant-based safe but effective cleaning products that will help parents clean up the mess that their children make all the time and you have been successful at what you do in the uk and you raised your profile avon uh because of dragon's den which is a british reality television program with entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists i saw your episode and those panelists were really grilling you uh right and left and they didn't really want to give you the money that you needed for a three percent stake in the company what was the experience like oh it was um it was a very difficult experience um quite nerve-wracking um but yes um you know you go to the studios you get filmed you know you get really pumped up and quite nervous about it but you know once you go in you just need to you know put your game face on and you know know and just reassure yourself that you know your stuff better than anyone else and thankfully um after in hours of grilling inside the den i was able to convince three of the dragons who made an offer to invest in the business and after that i felt that you know if i can convince these three dragons to invest in my business it just gave me a lot of confidence that i can convince many more people um to join our journey so you did not accept the investment um no i did that in the end we you know after negotiations after the then uh you know we both parted ways amicably well uh good good decision there because they were asking for 45 of your company so so vod if you were going to mentor entrepreneurs what life lessons can you share with our entrepreneurs who are starting a business so i would say just really two things so one is about um you know just about being ready for the journey um it's not a really it's it's not an easy journey at all um you know you go you know you go to so many lows before you hit a high um so it's it's like a roller coaster right but there's more like uh you know the route is going down first before you kind of like uh get get get an upward uh route um so yeah so just be just be ready for that and then secondly and as i said because of that journey being quite hard and very tricky you just need to anchor yourself into something um that will you know that will really make you grounded and in my case it's uh it's in it's about my faith in jesus that allowed me to do that so yeah fine find uh find those things um if you're looking for a way uh to start your own business well the future for nimble babies is very promising and i'm sure you will really go very far with your business thank you so much for joining us on the final word nimble babies founder and ceo von c joining us from london

Channel: CNN Philippines

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Id: lyw1rN9rpck

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022