1. Two specific sources of funding:
- The first promising source of funding I was able to identify is the NESTLE malnutrition Pilot Grant. This grant serves to allow start-up companies looking to address the problem of world hunger. The grant is primarily for young teams and companies that are still in the early stages of their design. This fits our team both in purpose and in the stage of development. The grant is for $20,000 which would allow us to run a large scale trial of our recipe in Sierra Leone and make connections in country to lower our production cost.
- Another option for funding is the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group Research Grant. This grant is given for innovative research relating to vegetarian nutrition. Luckily, our product, the sweet potato cake is 100% vegetarian and vegan. Our recipe only uses sweet potato, cornmeal, banana, and palm oil, we fit the criteria. The grant is for $10,000 and would also allow for us to do a trial run of the cakes in Sierra Leone and do nutrition testing to gather a true nutritional profile of our cakes.
2. Develop a detailed income statement for your venture for two years (at six month intervals). Explicit state the assumptions that underlie your financial model.
In general, the business plan is somewhat simple. Our estimates currently project that we can produce each cake for 4.5 cents. Our target wholesale price is 10 cents. This leaves us with 5.5 cents per cake of overhead cost. Some overheads will include our employees, cost of rent to use a facility, cost of machinery and power, and finally costs to get the product through the food administration in Sierra Leone. We are basing our costs off of the costs a contact named Jawara was able to provide us with. However, we expect the costs to vary quite a bit and will cause us to adjust our recipe and marketing strategy. Another assumption we are making is that we will not require packaging. Currently, we believe that these can be made the day before, rest for that day, and then be sold the next day, thus eliminated the need for long term packaging. The plan is to then sell the cakes to local street vendors at 15 cents per cake, which they can then sell to their customers for 20 cents each. One of our assumptions is that the cake manufacturer will be able to make to produce 100 cakes a day to ensure the company is profitable for ourselves but also for our employees and partners.
- First 6 months
The first time interval will be focused on gathering research to determine which of our products is best received by the children and mothers in Sierra Leone. After that, we will gather data on creating that product and create an extensive business plan to build around the product.
- 6-12 months
The second timeline will be dedicated to the testing of our product that we decide on in Sierra Leone. This will be nutritional testing for a full level of details regarding what is in our cakes. We will also do shelflife testing to ensure we can leave the cakes out for a day, and that they will still work well. The goal is also to make enough connections and partnerships to ensure we can produce 500 cakes a day.
- 12-18 months
In this section of time, the work will be focused on implementing our product in multiple regions throughout Sierra Leone. The goal is to produce 500 cakes a day in each location we have to ensure profit for ourselves and everyone involved in the project. Hopefully, we can expand to 2 regions at the minimum and produce 1000 cakes a day.
- 18-24 months
This last timeline is going to be focused on expanding the company to more and more regions of Sierra Leone and expanding the product that we create using AMPL. Licensing AMPL will be a large part of our company at this stage, as we will have a proof of concept and can market the success of the cakes to help sell our recipe design tool.