When you talk about Leading Ladies in or from Africa, Agatha Achindu definitely makes the list. This is a woman who was inspired not by the drive to succeed or by awards or fortune, but by the sheer desire to see babies eat healthy, delicious yet affordable food. She remembered how her Nigerian mom always made sure she and her siblings were always well fed. However, when she had her own kids, it was difficult to get quality baby food for them.
Agatha quit her job at a Fortune 500 company to pour her time and resources into packaging her line of frozen, squeezable organic baby-food purees, Yummy Spoonfuls.
She vividly remembers how risky her decision was at that time. She had to use up the money she and her husband had saved to start up her business in 2006 in Georgia. That decision has surely paid off.
The road to success, however, has not been very smooth. Though she worked with a handful of celebrity moms like actress Tia Mowry-Hardrict, the business didn’t boom like expected.
Then sometime in 2014, things took a turn for the better. She had the opportunity to meet Brazilian-born Camila Alves, model-designer and wife of actor Matthew McConaughey, who wanted to start her own baby-food business. Alves had been advised to meet with Agatha before starting up. The two later became partners and now run Yummy Spoonfuls together.
Today, Yummy Spoonfuls has gone from being a small business in Georgia to a nationwide brand. In 2009, Yummy Spoonfuls had 25 different types of pouches available in 14 stores. Today, it has 31 flavors in more than 1,500 stores.
Achindu says she always works with a schedule and keeps to it having time for the business, her children and her husband. In her words, that way “My husband doesn’t feel cheated. My kids don’t feel cheated. And my business doesn’t feel cheated.”
