'Food companies must become media companies,' says 39-year-old CEO who built a hit brand on short-form video

Yoon Seo-yeon, CEO of Soipt Biome [Soipt Biome]

"Food companies now have to become media companies."

When Yoon Seo-yeon, 39, CEO of Soipt Biome, launched her low-sugar condensed milk, she skipped television advertising and large-scale marketing campaigns entirely. Instead, she consistently posted short-form video content featuring low-sugar diet tips, home-cafe ideas and baking recipes. Viewers saved the videos and tried the recipes themselves. Questions naturally followed: "Where can I buy this condensed milk?"

The content sold before the product did. "Today's consumers are not buying a product — they are buying a lifestyle," Yoon said. "That is why I tried to build a 'low-sugar food culture' first."

The brand that emerged from that approach is JA:YU, a low-sugar condensed milk made using domestic soybean fermentation technology. Sales began with pre-orders. Revenue in the first month came to 4 million won ($2,760); the second month it doubled to 8 million won. The brand has since secured shelf space at major retail channels including Shinsegae and CJ Olive Young, growing 20 to 30 percent each month and recording 600 million won in sales in the first half of this year alone. Last year's revenue was 800 million won; the target for this year is 2 billion won.

"Because there was nothing like it before, I was even afraid to check the reviews," Yoon recalled. "When I saw customers who had baked with the product themselves and sent me photos, I became convinced that what we were doing was not simply selling a product — it was changing the way people eat."

Yoon had no background in agriculture. After studying nursing, she spent roughly a decade at Johnson & Johnson Korea and Neopham, gaining experience across medical, healthcare and cosmetics fields — from clinical work and product development through marketing and commercialization. She rose as the youngest employee to earn successive promotions, eventually drawing an annual salary of 80 million won at a stable corporate job.

Tempeh made from domestic soybeans. [Soipt Biome]

A Kitouyu tempeh product made from domestic soybeans and chickpeas — a plant-based protein food that reinterprets the traditional Indonesian fermented food tempeh for a modern palate. [Soipt Biome]

The more industries Yoon worked across, the more her attention shifted from the hospital to the dinner table. She became increasingly convinced that however important good cosmetics and medicines might be, health ultimately begins with what people eat every day.

"Health ultimately starts with what you eat," she said. "I believed that without changing what people consume daily, true health could never be fully achieved."

That conviction led her to found Soipt Biome, a food-tech startup, in 2022. Yoon saw agricultural produce not simply as something to be grown, but as the starting point of an industry where technology could create entirely new markets. Her goal was to combine fermentation technology and branding with domestic agricultural products to generate higher value.

"Most Korean agricultural products are sold as raw ingredients or simple processed goods, but in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries I repeatedly saw how a single material could be completely transformed in value through research and development and branding," she said. "I was convinced that same approach could be applied to agriculture."

The raw material she chose was domestic soybeans.

Soipt Biome developed its own proprietary technology for producing tempeh — the traditional Indonesian fermented food — from domestic soybeans, and for using the fermented protein generated in that process as a food ingredient. The first product to apply this technology was the low-sugar condensed milk JA:YU.

Conventional condensed milk had long been associated with high sugar content, but Soipt Biome used its fermented protein and in-house plant-based cream technology to create a product that cuts sugar while preserving rich flavor. The same technology has since been extended to plant-based creams and sauces, as well as tempeh chips under the Kitouyu brand.

Cream production using fermented protein generated during the tempeh manufacturing process. The company produces platform ingredients expandable into both food and cosmetics applications, based on its proprietary fermentation and emulsification technology. [Soipt Biome]

"What we are building is not just one condensed milk — it is a fermentation technology platform," Yoon said. "The goal is to expand from a single platform technology into a wide range of food products and, eventually, cosmetics ingredients."

The path to that point was not without setbacks.

The most costly trial came when the company launched a shelf-stable version of its low-sugar condensed milk. Eager to expand distribution and enter overseas markets, Yoon rushed the ambient product to market — only to find that some units swelled during distribution. The entire batch had to be recalled, and the company restarted from root-cause analysis.

The experience drove home the lesson that food can be a more demanding industry than pharmaceuticals or cosmetics. Passing a test once was not enough. She learned firsthand that output volume, packaging condition, sterilization consistency, and storage and distribution conditions all had to be verified repeatedly before a product could reach consumers.

"At the time, I was focused on getting the product out quickly while market attention was high," Yoon said. "But I learned the hard way that in food, thorough verification comes before a fast launch."

"Now we verify every stage — raw materials, formulation, sterilization, filling, packaging and storage — before releasing any product," she added.

Government support provided a springboard for growth. The company secured its first investment while developing its fermented protein ingredient technology, and refined its core technology further through the TIPS research and development support program. The shared factory at the National Food Cluster significantly reduced the burden of early-stage production equipment, freeing the company to cut capital expenditure and focus more resources on research and development.

This year, Soipt Biome is pursuing a listing on Amazon for the JA:YU brand and rolling out global digital marketing. From next year, the company plans to expand its presence at overseas trade fairs and grow its global business-to-business operations. Over the longer term, it aims to extend its tempeh fermented protein ingredient technology into cosmetics materials, building a "Food to Beauty" platform that bridges food and cosmetics — with a sales target of 20 billion won by 2028.

Yoon also offered advice to younger entrepreneurs entering the agricultural sector.

"When you are preparing to start a company, it is easy to focus on the technology or product you want to create — but ultimately what matters is finding out what consumers want first," she said. "A startup's competitive edge lies not in making something others already make a little better, but in discovering a market that does not yet exist."

"Agriculture must now become an industry that solves consumer problems, not simply one that produces raw ingredients," she added. "Add technology and branding, and domestic agricultural products can compete in global markets."

"My belief that health ultimately starts with what you eat has never changed," Yoon said. "My dream is to build a food-tech company that raises the value of Korean agricultural products through technology and earns recognition in world markets."

The full JA:YU product lineup. Starting with low-sugar condensed milk, the range has expanded to include cream-based products. [Soipt Biome]

adastra@heraldcorp.com