HealthStart
What does your company do?
Impepho Wellness Beverages is an Eastern Cape-based startup leveraging the traditional South African herb impepho (African sage) to create functional beverages targeting stress management and sleep improvement for busy professionals. Our inaugural products include three flavored iced teas (ginger, apple, passion fruit) and a pure impepho herbal tea. Rooted in the growing R3.2 billion functional beverage market, the business combines indigenous knowledge with modern wellness trends, offering a unique value proposition in a sector dominated by generic stress-relief products.
What is your biggest success?
healthStart has demonstrated early success with:
Retail Validation: Secured placement in a local retail store, proving market demand.
Impact Sourcing: Directly supports Impepho growers/harvesters, aligning profit with purpose.
Accelerator Pedigree: Selected for the inaugural South African cohort of The 54 Collective (a pan-African business accelerator).
Award-Winning: Won 1st place at the 2021 Nedbank YouthX Awards, showcasing innovation and scalability.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Our Biggest Hurdles so far:
We’ve bootstrapped our way to early wins, but hitting scale requires overcoming one key challenge: funding for compliance and market access.
Regulatory Roadblock: SA’s food safety certifications (like FSSC 22000) and labeling approvals are costly for startups – we’re talking R50k-R100k just to get shelf-ready.
Catch-22: Retailers want compliance paperwork before listing us, but we need volume sales to fund those certifications.
Current Workaround: We’ve been selling through informal channels and small retailers, but this caps our growth.
