Born in Camaquã - RS, Virgínia de Ávila Dias, known as Vica, began her professional journey at age 14, after reading a business magazine account of an entrepreneur in the chocolate market.
Within her, even in adolescence, there was already a strong entrepreneurial vein, and as an awakening, she decided to participate in an Easter egg course, in addition to others related to the cocoa industry, thus starting an informal chocolate business. However, her vision went far beyond production, and so she began to map the market to understand why someone consumed the product or not, understanding that the greatest fear of the chocolate consumer was the fear of its calories.
Once again, entrepreneurship, so latent in her journey, made her want more, and so she decided to become a Food Engineer, in order to study a way to make her product a healthy and functional chocolate, which was her great desire. Her dream was never to purely sell cocoa-derived products, but rather to bring an innovative product to the market that could help her passionate audience consume a functional and healthy chocolate.
With enormous focus, during college, she interned at a chocolate factory, where she was able to acquire extensive experience in production, in addition to completing a final college project based on this subject, which gained widespread national visibility, as it presented her great dream: a chocolate capable of offering health benefits.
Already the owner of the VGR Foods company since 1993, after graduating with honors, she began to act as a consultant, but she wanted more, and putting her dream into practice was her main goal.
So with this, once again, her entrepreneurial vein spoke louder and in 2006 she launched the Chocolife company, where she had the partnership of Nutritionist Gabriel de Carvalho, since her focus was to have a healthy chocolate, zero-sugar chocolate lines, and to develop extremely nutritional products.
And right at the opening of her company, healthy chocolate began to be developed, and in 2007, it already moved to large-scale production and for sale in Porto Alegre.
Vica, at this moment, realized that way back, when she was still a little girl, she was right about what really needed to be done so that chocolate could be consumed consciously, making it healthy.
Thus, Chocolife 50% cocoa was born. Seeing her business grow and take on large proportions, she knew she needed structured growth to continue to succeed, Virginia moved to São Paulo in 2008, and in 2009 she launched Chocolife 70% cocoa.
Virginia, with her vision, focused not only on benefiting her audience with healthy chocolate, bringing its functional version, but also protecting the environment, where she has a great concern, so that none of her products cause any damage to our forests or use animal resources.
Her concern generated an expedition to Pará, called the "Cocoa Expedition", in order to study the best practices for raw material extraction and reforestation, as well as family farming and how to protect the environment. In addition, she led various pieces of research in the Brazilian cocoa regions, identifying the best practices for consuming this product to produce her healthy chocolates.
From 2009 to today, Vica has been expanding her dream to large productions, where she has already had her office expanded twice to meet the high demand, in addition to expanding her factory, seeing her staff increase, her products diversify, as well as being featured in the news due to her entrepreneurial journey, through the program "Pequenas Empresas, Grandes Negócios" (Small Businesses, Big Businesses).
An example of entrepreneurship and innovation, Vica will not stop and will still sweeten many Brazilian palates in a healthy and sustainable way.
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