BCBusiness

July/August 2021 - The Top 100

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 57 A N A M I K A G I O I A AGE: 26 Founder Sacred Foods LIFE STORY: Trying to sell colourful rocks to neighbours in her native India may not have worked for Anamika Gioia as a child, but it's a good thing it didn't dim her entrepreneurial spirit. A few years later, at 13, Gioia moved to Canada and discovered that her favourite snack–popped lotus seeds–wasn't available anywhere. Knowing she'd eventually launch a food company selling the snacks, Gioia patiently waited, developing skills in digital market- ing and website design as a free- lancer. At a certain point, though, enough was enough. "I spent a lot of time taking other people's ideas and using my skills to turn their dreams into reality," she recalls. "When I was 23, I thought, Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing this, or do I want to go do it myself?" Gioia launched Sacred Foods and its four flavours of popped lotus seeds in May 2020, right in the swing of the pandemic lockdown. The seeds are popped in India and shipped to Vancouver, where Gioia is the lone full-time employee and sells 120-gram bags for under $5. BOTTOM LINE : Was the timing with COVID-19 secretly serendipitous for Sacred Foods? We'll never know, but it's in 184 stores across Canada and saw sales in the high five figures for its first year. Hey, it beats selling rocks. –N.C. V I C T O R N I C O L O V AGE: 28 Founder + CEO Anvy Technologies LIFE STORY: There's no doubt that more than a few business ideas have been born out of UVic parties. But it's likely safe to say that not many of them have made Time magazine's annual list of the top 100 innovations of the year. Alas, Victoria native and engineering student Victor Nicolov was peeling potato skins when he got the idea for Sepura. "I had a big party at one point–cut, like, 40 potatoes and threw a bunch of peels in the garburator," Nicolov recalls. "The whole thing got clogged; it was a disaster." In the process, Nicolov learned a bunch of things about garburators. "They're bad for the environment and bad for cities–they don't only cause clogs in your building but also further out," he explains, noting that the devices are banned in many munici- palities across Canada and in several European countries. "A lot of the time when you see the city digging up pipes outside, that's maintenance for clogs that cost millions of dollars a year." So Nicolov set about creating a better garbage disposal that, instead of grinding kitchen scraps, separates and collects the solids in an odourless bin that lives under the sink. Then the user simply pours the waste into their compost bin. BOTTOM LINE : Partly thanks to the Time nod, Nicolov quickly sold out of pre-ordered units. He and Anvy's five staff hope to ship the first 2,000 Sepuras–at $580 a pop–in the next few months. –N.C. 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y Victor Nicolov Anamika Gioia LEFT: ANISA NADJ

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