Two Elon seniors, Juan Daniel Chiriboga and Bernardo Vargas, founded a new brand of energy drink called Yapa. A key ingredient in the allnatural drink is Guayusa, a holly species native to the upper Amazon rainforest, primarily from Ecuador’s Napo province. Daniel Chiriboga sat down with Elon News Network’s Alice Morrissey to talk about how the brand came to be.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
What was your process in creating and designing these drinks?
We started with Bernardo Vargas, my friend and co-founder. A year and a half ago we both went to the Ecuadorian Amazon. I am from Ecuador, and he came with me. He tried Guayusa which is a plant in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When we came back, we were thinking about doing a business idea and then we realized that the energy drink industry was missing something healthy, something that had added benefits and we decided that Guayusa was the right product for it. Then we started formulation, so we formulated in LA, we found the ingredients that we needed and then we found a facility where we could co-pack, and finally we are here with production. These first cans arrived three days ago and we’re very excited to finally have our product here.
You talked a little bit about your trip that inspired this, for you as a student what made you take on this project now as a senior with graduation coming up?
I’m an entrepreneurship student, so I always knew I wanted to do something. And Bernie, he’s a comms major but he also knew he also wanted to do something. So it was perfect for us and we decided to start now because, first of all, we saw the trend and we thought it was the right moment. But we also saw the university as a form of support for us because of the networks we have, because of the teachers we have. We can talk to teachers, we have mentors, we talked to a lot of teachers including Sean McMahon, Dr. Kennedy, a lot of teachers in the business school, Dean Ajjan, so many people who have helped us in this process and they’ve made this possible. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without the support of the school and those mentors and friends.
What do you want your message to customers to be?
I think they need to understand that we are a truly transparent brand. All the ingredients in the can you can read, there’s only six ingredients. We’ve added prebiotics, we’ve added electrolytes. It’s only 25 calories, one gram total of sugar, no added sugars. So we want to be that transparent ingredient, that transparent brand that makes customers not only have energy but also feel good and know that what they’re drinking is actually good for them.