STELLA THIPSUKHON UNGPHONGPHAN
Passionate about nutrition, organic farming, and natural therapies, Stella teaches others how to live whole and well in harmony with nature. She connects farmers with consumers and educates consumers about healthy food choices.
“We want to turn the marketplace upside down. You shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why is this so expensive?’. You should ask, ‘Why is this so cheap?'”
“Two years ago I was working as a radiographer in Sydney. While on the surface everything was going well, I started feeling that something was not right. My mom always told me that success is having a good education, a good job, a car, a house, security. I should have been happy but instead I felt empty. I had a somewhat of a “quarter life crisis”. Someone suggested Tony Robbins and then I read “Eat, Pray, Love” and that really resonated with me. The day after I finished the book, I asked for a 2-month leave of absence, travelled around Asia, and came to Thailand. My grandmother passed away during that time and that was hard for me because she had raised me when my mom was in Australia. After all of this, I had an awakening: I had never really liked radiography. My passion has always been in nutrition and health so I went back to Australia and handed in my resignation. During those two months of travel I grew spiritually and I couldn’t go back to my day job. I wanted to be in the health field and inspire people to live more healthily and prevent illnesses by working on the roots of the problems rather than just fixing the symptoms. So I myself came back to my roots. I came home to Thailand.”
“There is something bigger that I want to contribute to. My partner and I are creating a platform that connects producers to consumers. We have developed it from the inspiration of our traveling around Thailand and sourcing high-quality natural ingredients from producers for another project. We saw the challenges both small-scale producers and consumers were facing. We want to bridge the gap between consumers and producers through education, trust and transparency. Right now we are saturated with information and it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not. This will be a platform where each small scale producer has a profile and you can see every step of the way as if you actually went to their farm so that you can understand and appreciate what it takes to make each product.”
“The biggest challenge is consumer awareness about the value of “organic” for their health and for the planet. Some people consider organic as simply soaking vegetables in vinegar, when in fact “organic” starts from the soil. We want to bring awareness and educate people about seeing value rather than just the price, about where things actually come from and how they are made. Right now, people rely on organic certification which adds to the price and makes organic not accessible for many. There are also loopholes that many consumers are not aware of. For example, organic certification does not necessarily mean pesticide free. And it is also a tedious and expensive process so many farmers are not certified as organic producers because they simply can’t afford it. There are many local farmers who for me are “beyond organic”. Their farming practices are so pure even though they are not organically certified.”
“We funded the platform with our savings and it is a growing team. We have been weighing the possibility of investors but we realized that if we took an investment offer, we would risk losing the whole essence of what it is. We have the “farmers’ mentality” where we want to slowly plant a seed, let it grow naturally instead of rapid growth. We want to stick to the original vision, why we started to bridge the gap between small scale producers and consumers.”
“We want to empower people to their own health, to see value and not just look at prices. We want to turn the marketplace upside down. You shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why is this so expensive?’. You should ask, ‘Why is this so cheap?’.”
Company: Stella Wellness
Location: Bangkok
Founded: 2015
No of Employees: 0
Women-led
