Corina Huang, Founder of Boncha Bio | Cartier Women's Initiative 2021 Fellow
For Corina Huang, health innovation began while witnessing her grandmother’s stroke recovery. The supplements she needed for healing kept getting stuck in her throat.
“I had to break pills in half or open the capsules,” Corina recalls. “That impacted their efficacy and slowed her recovery.”
Corina learnt that about one in two people experience difficulty swallowing pills or capsules at some point in their lives, often because the pills are too large to swallow, have an unpleasant aftertaste, or trigger vomiting. As a result, many people miss out on the essential nutrients and supplements they need.
Corina came up with a user-friendly solution: Boncha Bio, a company that transforms traditional supplements into easy-to-swallow, better absorption Candy Capsules. Drawing on her previous experience in a high-tech confectionery venture, she envisioned a combination of pleasant mouthfeel, sufficient dosing of active ingredients, and a science-based design. Her team developed a proprietary manufacturing process, NutrientDeliveryOptimizer®, which uses advanced low-temperature and micro-suspension techniques to preserve nutrient integrity and optimise absorption. The breakthrough platform reimagines supplement delivery for all ages.
Since its launch, the company has delivered over 20 million Candy Capsules and partnered with nutraceutical brands worldwide. Producing at commercial scale across Asia, Europe, and North America, Boncha Bio is helping to support people with their eye health, sleep, digestion, and immunity. Although the format is especially useful for seniors and children, its appeal spans age groups and markets – it makes healthy routines easier, more enjoyable, and easier to stick with.
“The big goal for me is to help everyone take nutrients with ease,” Corina says. “It’s about preventing illness, supporting caregivers, and helping people stay healthier for longer.”
Despite the impact of Boncha Bio, Corina remains acutely aware of the structural barriers facing women founders, especially those innovating in health- and science-based fields. Persistent challenges include slow regulatory updates and outdated classifications, caregiving constraints, and unequal access to capital. Thoughtful, practical policy support would help safe and effective innovations reach users sooner.
Corina respectfully suggests three actions for policymakers:
1. Enable agile regulation. Establish fast-track, sandbox pathways to evaluate innovative health products and new dosage forms, such as Boncha Bio’s Candy Capsules, based on scientific merit and alignment with existing standards – and set clear criteria and timelines. This will reduce delays from legacy classifications and support predictable, science-based review across markets, improving public health and delivering user benefits.
2. Support caregiving and flexible work policies. Many women founders balance building companies with caregiving duties. By funding coworking spaces with on-site childcare and promoting flexible work options, including flexible grant and reporting windows, policymakers can help women entrepreneurs start, grow, and sustain their businesses.
3. Unlock gender-responsive capital. Women founders often receive only a small share of venture and growth capital, especially in scienceintensive fields. Launch dedicated funds for women-led ventures and offer incentives to investors who channel capital to these businesses, with transparent outcome reporting to scale what works, reward impact-driven investment, and accelerate innovation.
All these actions are about unlocking untapped innovation. When women like Corina are given the tools to lead, they become best positioned to deliver solutions that improve lives, strengthen public health, and drive inclusive economic growth.
This story will be featured in the GEM 2024/2025 Women's Entrepreneurship Report, to launch on 19 November 2025. Thank you to the Cartier Women’s Initiative, one of our report sponsors, for providing this material and helping to ground our data in a real-world context.
Redesigning Supplement Delivery, One Candy Capsule at a Time
