This time around we sat down with Kristina Cueva, founder of IKA Beauty and co-founder of brand new project Biodami. We met at a Next Women event (preparing an investors pitch), went for coffee afterwards and found we had a lot to talk about as solo startup ladies.

Originally from the Philippines, Kristina has been living in the Netherlands for 27 years. She has a degree in biomedical sciences, public health & economics, and has a broad experience working in the regulatory affairs for pharmaceutical companies. From that world, she moved on to research, development and innovations, and, in February she quit to be a full-time entrepreneur – to further grow her line of vegan luxury red lipsticks IKA Beauty.

It started with a passion. As Kristina explained, she has always had a red lipstick as a sort of a secret weapon, a finishing touch to accentuate who she is. Gradually she began to understand the power of the effect it has on people around her when she’s wearing it and how much of a statement red lipstick really is. 

“I feel red lipstick is so powerful. It can have many meanings depending on who you are. It’s passion, it’s sexuality, it’s powerful, it’s identity, it’s a lot of things. It was something that I really wanted to share with the world. I decided to come up with good quality red lipsticks that everybody can wear. I do believe there’s a shade of red for everybody. I started with red lipsticks and hope to become a lip authority in the cosmetics industry.” 

We’re talking high-performance lipsticks. Not only are they vegan, but they keep their word in terms of delivering what we claim . There might be different preferences, but the highest priority is for the lipsticks to be lightweight, comfortable, high-pigment, and very moisturising. Kristina made sure the formulation is such that they don’t bleed, or feather.

“Red is both a high maintenance, but also low maintenance kind of colour. You don’t need much, and you don’t need a lot of other cosmetics products when you have red lipstick on.” 

Together with an old colleague, Kristina also founded a new brand called Biodami, which is a range of probiotic-based food supplements for Iron deficiency, gluten intolerance, gut related stress reactions. 

“We’ve gained so much more knowledge from what’s called the Human Genome Project about our gut microbiome and it’s foundation for health. 70% of your immunity is from your gut. So we don’t know everything yet, there are trillions of different microbes in your gut, but slowly they are finding strains and types of good bacteria in there that specifically have effects on our health. It makes sense, because our gut health is there not only for immunity. It helps you digest food, it helps you absorb nutrients, so it has quite a lot of functions. People say that it’s our second brain, and I’m beginning to really think that it might be our first brain.”

Investing thoroughly into science, clinical studies and additional research, the main aim of the Biodami  is to revolutionise our health through the gut, starting with a few food supplements for stress, gluten intolerance and iron deficiency. Kristina is mildly gluten-intolerant herself and her co-founder had a lot of issues with iron deficiency, so they did a lot of research in these areas they are personally affected by. In fact, everybody is gluten intolerant to a certain extent, but you just can’t always diagnose it. As for iron, it’s the number one nutrient deficiency in the world.