A former software engineer from Singapore who launched the Love With Food service in the US, has taken its first step toward international expansion.

For founder Aihui Ong, now based in California, opening the healthy-snack service in Singapore is “a personal milestone”. Singapore is just one of 25 countries where it is expanding simultaneously, but is the only Asian country so far.

It has taken Aihui nearly five years to build her company up from the ground, a subscription-based service that sends custoers boxes of healthy snacks.

A computer science graduate from the National University of Singapore, Aihui worked as a software engineer at Singaporean IT group NCS until being headhunted by American companies at the end of the 1990s.

In the US, she worked on financial software for international companies including General Motors and Sony. But she found the professional environment unfulfilling, and that coupled with upheaval in her personal life gave her a new mission, reports Tech in Asia.

Smaller brands

When a friend’s food business failed because of distribution problems, Aihui came up with the Love With Food concept. Subscribers receive boxes of all-natural, organic and gluten-free snacks. Everything in the box comes from smaller food brands that want to get their product in front of customers.

Moreover, the startup captures data on consumer preferences, feedback on specific products and other data, which it then sells to companies interested in such insights.

This was key to the company’s mission from the start. “Coming from a financial engineering background, I knew how important data is,” says Aihui.

Monetising its data started only last year, and already contributes about 10 per cent of revenue. The rest is from subscriptions.

There is also a social impact component, with the value of a meal being donated to food banks for every purchase made on the site. This format will be continued as the service rolls out internationally. Love With Food is co-ordinating with a global food bank network so it can provide meals to countries where purchases originate.

Love With Food has so far raised US$4 million in external funding and has acquired four other startups, like gluten-free meal service G-Free Foodie Box Club and subscription food provider Taste Guru. Its revenue last year was US$4.5 million, which is expected to double this year.

Simultaneous expansion

Because of demand, the company is expanding its service to 25 new countries simultaneously. It has also achieved large enough scale in the US market to be able to negotiate shipping rates.

Love With Food started out as a solo project. Once Aihui had her basic idea down, she taught herself Ruby on Rails, a framework for web applications. She founded the company, built the website, approached food producers and won a 70,000-strong fanbase on Facebook – all while working from her bedroom.

She then pitched to 500 Startups. When they asked how she managed to do it all by herself, she replied, “Fund me and I’ll teach you how”.

The same year it was founded, Love With Food graduated from the 500 Startups accelerator program. Now the company has a team of 20.

Describing herself as a “control freak”, Aihui holds regular meetings and updates, and sets monthly goals. “I’ve already done everyone’s job,” she says, “so I can be very empathetic about what it entails.”

Love With Food is up against other subscription-based snack-box services both in the US (Nature Box) and Singapore (BoxGreen), but Aihui believes they are not direct competitors.

“They private-label their product,” she says. “They are building their own food brand, whereas we are building a discovery platform.

“For me, the key is to build the best discovery platform for consumers, to be the largest direct-to-consumer channel for food companies.”