Debra Li

debra_lidan@163.com

A four-member startup team headed by 15-year-old Wu Yi and her friends introduced to an interested audience their project in a conference room at the Civic Center in Futian District on Saturday morning.

The team, having acquired the Zombies Cat image to represent their products, will soon open their first shop in the Huaqiang North area.

“The Zombies Cat, created by young designer Yu Hai, is very popular among young people, who are familiar with its fiery red image and cool slogan ‘Devour All Negative Energy,’” said Wu Yi. “We’d like to use this image to reach out to kids and urge them to drop unhealthy eating and drinking habits.”

Wu said a friend of hers who suffered a heart problem not long ago led her to come up with this startup idea.

“Many of my classmates like to drink milk teas and all other types of soft drinks, which contain a lot of sugar as well as coloring and flavoring additives. Some even have three or more cups a day,” she said.

Wu thinks these types of popular drinks have contributed to the rising overweight and obesity rates among China’s young people in the cities.

“A healthy drink is hard to come by in the market,” said Chen Honglin, another member on the team. “Even those labeled as fruit and vegetable juice are sometimes high in sugar content and have been piled up with additives.”

Besides a shop in the downtown area, the team is considering to develop an app to offer an online delivery service that will also include social networking functions to encourage young people to manage their diets and cultivate healthy habits like exercising more often.

Still performing research on their product, Wu hopes to develop something that might also contain functional ingredients that can improve young people’s overall health.

“This can be difficult and there can be a lot of technical problems ahead,” she said. “But it’s our dream and nothing will stop us. We start this not just to make money, but in the hope that it will help more young people to reevaluate their lifestyle and live more healthily.”

Kang Jingxuan, a veteran researcher specializing in food and diet, has promised to help the team develop their products.

“You are what you eat,” Kang said. “I’ll do my best to help these brave young people.”

The four team members are 10th and 11th graders from Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, Shenzhen College of International Education and Shenzhen Vanke Meisha Academy.