Interview With Lina Bartuseviciute - Founder and CEO of Litao.

The Future Proof Hub is delighted to interview Lina Bartuseviciute, the Founder and CEO of Litao – experts in bringing European and International food and beverage brands into the China Market and are developing an AI-powered virtual export assistant called ‘Export Smart’ to further help manage this often-challenging process. Export Smart has been accepted into the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund programme which provides grants to support innovative ideas and early-stage start-ups and was selected out of an application pool of hundreds of applicants.

FPH: When was your company founded?

Lina: I have three companies. 2015 in Shanghai 2016 in HK and Lithuania in 2023.

FPH: What is the problem your company is seeking to provide a solution for?

Lina: there are currently 300,000 F&B manufacturers in Europe. Less than 5% of them have ever sold anything to China. The growth opportunity in Europe is very fragmented. Each country follows their own national systems, and the variety of products differ greatly from country to country. There is a limitation for growth. We believe Europe produces world class food with heritage and tradition. My company helps those manufacturers to find importers in China and bring those products to Chinese consumers. We have partnerships in other countries in Asia as well as China. We provide a combination of consulting and education as well as sales services.

FPH: What made you want to pursue this type of business?

Lina: There are a lot of political challenges in general when doing business with China. I found people in food are not political. My belief is that through food we can also exchange cultures. I wanted to foster better cultural understanding of Chinese consumers and Chinese people in general and I do it through food by talking about it – why we eat this food, why we pair it with other foods and how we experience life so we always talk about lifestyle more than anything when we introduce a new brand.

I feel challenged with the market regulations for food safety in China. If we bring enough examples of healthy foods into China and talk about how these products were created and why. I believe that this will bring more demands from Chinese consumers to bring about stronger regulations.

I have a consulting background and have worked with large corporates because of my Chinese language ability. Now I am bringing this knowledge into more people in small and medium enterprises that lack oversight and vision for export markets.

FPH: How did you get funded to start your business?

Lina: My own money. I got funded by my clients. There was a need in the market and people wanted questions answered which they asked me about which all started with me writing a blog in 2009. This became massively popular with over 200,000 unique IP addresses reading it (there was no concept of followers back then). This scaled out massively and became a topic in national media in Lithuania and anyone who had an interest in China could see my thoughts and they would approach me with questions. From that I started charging them for my answers. My clients in 2015 said to me that I was the only one who could figure this out. My clients taught me about service proposals and what they need. I listened to the clients and give them what they need in a packaged solution.

I learned to do that because I used to be an interpreter because of my Chinese ability. A good interpreter needs to listen to the idea beyond the words and be able to recreate it in a new language. That listening was also allowing me to listen to my clients needs and be able to translate it into a service package.

It was all a natural progression. My first deal was around USD1,000, the next was USD10,000 and the next one was USD100,000 so it was growing when each time I proved myself at a certain stage, someone would bring me a bigger order and so on. In the end I was managing a European Commission project with thirty-two brands for three years during the pandemic.

FPH: What are some of the key challenges your customers face when trying to enter the China market?

Lina: There are a list of challenges. We talk to senior management and CEO’s who agree the biggest challenge is psychological pressure. In academics there is a term called “Psychological distance.” When there is a big psychological distance between people the exports decrease. When there is a smaller psychological distance, the exports increase. You can equate this to trust. We are doing research now with four PhD’s we have in our team in Europe who are researching how the psychological distance can be shortened to make the people feel more comfortable doing business together.

There are also other challenges such as time zone, language barrier, and culture. If you look at the bigger picture, the Psychological distance is when people do not feel familiar with others and that lack of familiarity creates fear, then the psychological distance appears and you see them as ‘others’, not similar to you but as very different people. In reality, these people are not very different they are just hungry (for quality food and beverage products).

FPH: How do you advise your customers what type of channel, region, city, medium to sell the products most effectively?

Lina: We focus on a few things. For the premium quality healthy products that are imported, it is not so much about the region or the channel, it is really much more about the target audience.

For example, there could be a person who likes to play guitar in a small town but also in a large town. So, we are looking for those people to give them a product that aligns with their lifestyle. In the food industry the positioning needs to focus on personal benefit. For example, there may be some people who suffer from a particular chronic illness. One of my business partners brought a supplement that helps them with that chronic illness management. If you find a supplement that the Chinese consumers are still not familiar with, you need to create a case study on how to use it, when to use it, and why use it and in the case of some supplements I know that there are more than 300,000 families have been assisted in managing a particular disease in China – they did not know that there was a supplement that could help them. The job is to find out how to tweak the performance for their everyday life. It is not so much about the region or the channel – it is much more about the end consumer, and it is very important to have the right product positioning so it is very clear how that particular consumer will benefit from your product. Even when consumption is going down, if you position it right, some people will budget this in.

Another particular habit that Chinese consumers have is that they may go to a store to utilise it as their showroom, and they then buy it online. So, all the information about your product should be online / e-commerce site and it should be very extensive to really explain how the product appeals to that particular consumer.

FPH: Are there any laws / regulation that you find most difficult when trying to run your business or that your clients find most difficult to navigate?

Lina: The biggest difference between Europe and China is in the regulatory landscape because the Chinese customs have different requirements for the same product. When the client is already registered and ready to sell the product in Europe, it does not mean the product will be also considered safe or suitable for the China market. The first thing we do normally is to really make sure that the product ingredients are aligned with the product standards in China.

For example, we had a client selling mayonnaise. In Europe, it was very light weighted flavor mayonnaise. When we did the Compliance check in China, this product can only qualify for salad dressing category not mayonnaise because it was not fat enough so if we wanted to qualify for mayonnaise category, we needed to increase the fat and create the product to make it sweeter because the Chinese consumer likes their mayonnaise sweet so then we had a chance in the market. You need to read the product label carefully and compare it to the Chinese standards and then make decisions.

This challenge is very particular to my industry. You can lose money if not done properly as your product can be fined or product confiscated or destroyed if it is not in accordance with the market regulation.

FPH: Is the market regulation very clear or is it ambiguous where you may need to take a risk.

Lina: It is very black and white; it is online and in Chinese language. We still hire professional technical consultants who focus specifically on analysing these standards because they know the way to manage it. You need to have an eye for it and the experience to know how to handle this.

FPH: What is your view on AI and impact to business? How will it impact your business, and will jobs be replaced because of it?

Lina: The answer to this, I believe what my fellow CEOs in tech say: “I am not HR, I am a creating a product”. What is the focus of your business – do you worry about all the problems in the world, or do you worry about the specific problem? The problem that I am worried about is misalignment and miscommunication. A lot of people who have jobs related to market entry managers may have just come out of college and may not have been to Europe but they may attempt to help foreign brands enter the China market so I am creating an AI assistant that will follow a process and a structure that will eliminate those challenges because you will be able to speak to the virtual assistant at your own time and on own computer so you will not experience the language barrier and the time zone difference barrier as well as avoid mistakes due to lack of experience. The AI assistant can speak in your own language and own cultural norm.

FPH: We understand you are working on a new project called ‘Export Smart’ which is an AI powered virtual export assistant for international F&B brands. Any information you can share on how this works, what stage you are at, and how it will help your clients?

Lina: We have the Alpha prototype – where we are teaching the people of the process of China market entry. You need to answer fifty-two questions to get result. We are creating two iterations for the process of brand onboarding. First is the initial call when qualifying the brand – we will use AI to have that conversation. So currently when a brand talks to a service provider, 90% of brands are not ready for the China market. So that 90% can be eliminated with the help of AI and you can focus your time and energy on the actual clients.

This solves a real market problem. Secondly you need to prepare twelve different documents for customs clearance. So, the second iteration that we are doing is that we will train the AI to be able to collect those twelve documents. Currently it takes a month or two going back and forth by emails, but it can easily be done by AI.

We are creating a chatbot that will be an ‘employee’ for Chinese importers who will do the job better than their teams.

FPH: When will Export Smart be launched and what stage in development is it?

Lina: It will be in process of launching over the next 5 years – because we have different functionalities and will be adapting and updating along the way. The industry is traditional, and people are resistant to change. As we are dealing with food and farmers they are more far away from technology although Covid proved to be very helpful as they learned how to use technology. The first prototype will lunch in September 2024 and will become available to Chinese importers through our network in December 2024.

I have worked with a thousand exporters and have noticed similar patterns so have been able to build an algorithm based on my life experience. I have personally negotiated over a thousand meetings. Not many people have been through this so I feel it is almost like my duty to share and the way I want to share this is not to write a book or make a video but I want to create a practical tool which would be the virtual assistant using my experience in the form of an algorithm to help people experience less conflict and psychological pressure.

FPH: Is this app being built in-house or work with external developers?

Lina: We build this in-house. We have a talented CTO in Lithuania and Eastern Europe is known to do very solid tech work. He has a team of five developers, and I work on budgets, timelines, and schedules as the CEO.

FPH: What would be your suggestion to young people now on how they can best ‘Future Proof’ their careers given AI, technology changes to jobs in the future?

Lina: Young people need to act on passion and learn what they are curious about. A lot of people try to blend into the trends. I genuinely believe that each and every person including young people are unique individuals. They each have an interest to explore in their life. If they could be taught to listen to themselves and be taught to be independent decision makers and empowered to make decisions that serve them, this will future proof them for everything. But the point is not to future proof them for a career – the point is to be happy and to encourage yourself to make choices to be happy, so you feel fulfilled and live a meaningful life. Kids are often my teacher – I hire very young people – some of my best hires are 19 years old – they are so smart its incredible.

You should not be scared of it – if you are scared you facilitate fear and you become distracted from opportunities. I do not believe in fear of missing out. My calling is that integration of cultures and facilitating connections. I knew I wanted to do this since I was 13 years old. It has now been more than twenty years  that I have been doing this and even though there have been many challenges with countries such as Lithuania involved in politics with China. I was not scared – I kept doing what I do best – and what I do best is to facilitate these human connections and I have found a new form in the world of technology.

FPH: Finally, if you are at a dinner party, and you could bring one guest whom would you bring and why? (anyone from history past and present – politicians, scientists etc).

Lina: I have heard this question often, but I do not tend to deal with hypotheticals – I have incredible friends and surround myself with very interesting people and this why I choose to live in Hong Kong – the people are very resilient and strong. So I get to invite to have dinners with my ideal dinner dates every week.