YAKI Herbal Laboratory, the first and biggest Mindanao-based company that is into manufacturing of pharmaceutical products, is an epitome of a Mindanaoan’s entrepreneurial skill and courage to join and grab a modest share of a market dominated by multi-national corporations.
Based in the city of Kidapawan in Cotabato Province in Southern Philippines, the firm has, since 2008, been granted permit by the Bureau of Food and Drugs and Cosmetics (BFADC), now Food and Drug Administration, to manufacture herbal-based pharmaceutical products like the Yaki Oil Liniment, Yaki Beauty Care Soap, Yaki Baby Soap, Hermosa Kojic Whitening Soap, Kiddie Yaki Syrup and Yaki Capsule.
It first manually produced the Yaki Liniment Oil as a backyard project using very crude indigenous production materials with a meagre investment of only P50,000.00, which the lady-owner earned from being a broadcast journalist and insurance underwriter at the same time.
Owned by a Mandaya (one of the 13 major ethno-linguistic groups of Mindanao), who hails from the Caraga, Davao Oriental and earned her high school diploma and college degree as a working student, the company, which started to peddle its products in few parts of the cities of Davao, Zamboanga and Cotabato, is now a firm that is in transition from a single proprietorship to a corporation.
In a span of five years, Yaki Herbal Laboratory has captured a “comfortable” market share in key cities and provinces of Mindanao and Visayas. By 2014, it shall expand its market in Luzon while studying the Asian market.
YAKI, an acronym for “Yaman Ang Kalusugan Ingatan,” which means health is wealth that has to be nurtured, managed to earn P500,000.00 that was treated as another fresh capital that the industrious lady-owner infused in her business. In due time, the newly-infused capital, meteorically surged to around P5-million, the amount needed to start building her own laboratory at a small parcel of lot at Paco, Kidapawan City in 2007.
Sheer faith in God Almighty, coupled with hard work and perseverance, is the biggest factor that Ms. Lulu Pua, proprietor of YAKI Herbal Laboratory, attributes for the modern facilities and state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment that the Company presently has.
In 2012 and 2013, Yaki Herbal Laboratory has begotten sister companies which would soon consummate the Yaki Group of Companies. Among the subsidiaries of the Yaki Company Inc. (YCI) are the 1) Yaki Herbal Laboratory (YHL); 1) Elai Resort Hotel and Recreation Center, 2) Yaki Purified Water, and, 3) the Yaki Bakeshop. It also inaugurated on December 10, 2013 the Radio Station dxRL Joy FM, the first of a network of radio stations that the Yaki Broadcasting System would establish in major cities of Mindanao and Visayas.
It was in 2014 that the YCI started its five-year transition program from single proprietorship towards being a Corporation.
That same year, the Tri-Peoples Resource Development & Services Foundation Inc., (3P Foundation), which is now implementing YAKI's Corporate Social Responsibility Program, was organized and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On March 8, 2015, the 3P Foundation would inaugurate its 3P Farm, which practices integrated organic farming that both serves as an income generating project of the Foundation to support its health and education programs, and, a model farm for reflection down the beneficiary communities that would become recipients of the Farm's dispersal program.
In 2014, Yaki started the construction of Punta Elai, a modest but elegant beach resort at the Island Garden City of Samal, that was inaugurated on March 6, 2016.
The year 2015 was "golden harvest year" for the YAKI as it reaped a total of six prestigious awards from an independent and prestigious award-giving body, the Consumers Choice and Gold Seal of Qulaity Awards. Among the awards coffered to the YAKI are: 1) 2015 Consumers Choice Award as an Outstanding Herbal-Based Pharmaceutical Products Provider; 2) 2015 Golden Seal of Quality Awards as an Outstanding Herbal-Based Pharmaceutical Products Provider; 3) it's President, Lourdesima P. Elusfa with 2015 Dangal ng Bayan Award as Outstanding Lady Entrepreneur; 4) 2015 Seal of Quality Golden Globe Annual Awards Council for Business Excellence; 5) its President with the Outstanding and Significant Achievement in Entreprenuership.
The ERHRC was also conferred by the 2015 Golden Globe Annual Awards Council for Business Excellence the 2015 Seal of Quality as Best Resort and Hotel Awards.
Barely a year of Punta Elai's operation, another building that houses a restaurant, meat shop, billiard hall and dart board at the ground floor and a huge function room that can accommodate 300 people at the second floor was inaugurated in October of 2016.
It was also in 2016 when the construction started for the extension of ERHRC, which rooftop houses the first-ever "Airplane Resto" in the Philippines. The Resto has been named Elai Airlines owing to its airplane-shaped and meticulously designed similar to an aircraft.
Even before the construction of the ERHRC could reached 50 percent completion, the construction of a radio station tower and its transmitter and studio building was started in March of 2017, slowly bringing to realisation the company's ambition to put up at least four radio stations in Mindanao.
What then were only five products of YCI, namely: 1) Yaki Liniment Oil; 2. Yaki Beauty Soap, 3) Kiddie Yaki Vitamins, 4) Yaki Herbal Capsule; and, 5) Hermosa Soap, would, in 2017, increase to eight while four other products were also being developed. The three added products that hit the market like hotcake in the late 2016 are: 1) Kopi Yaki 7 in 1; 2) Kopi Yaki 3 in 1; and, 3) Kopi Yaki Pure Coffee.
Following a breakthrough in studies and researches done in 2016, three more products were developed and would hit the market in the first quarter of 2017, they are: 1) Serpentina Plus; 2) Celebrity Beauty Soap; and, 3) Glutagen-C, making a total of 11 products developed and being marketed by the YCI.
Aside from the 11 YCI products, it has, since 2014, engaged in tolling for small entrepreneurs marketing soap, liniment and herbal capsule. In 2017, the YCI would be producing, on a tolling basis, five other products in the market. Two of them have, however, ceased their distribution business after encountering their first few financial storms.
The 3P Foundation, since 2016 would then be starting to distribute organically raised pork and chicken, duck, turkey, quail and goat meat, aside from live animals would sell both for breeding and meat purposes. It was in late 2016 that the 3P Farm started its dispersal program while sustaining its scholarship and medical mission programs. It has more than 80 scholars in all grade levels all over the country, though the bulk of them are in Kidapawan City.
Its education Program has also donated, from the fund channeled thru it by the YCI, a school building at the Baugo Elementary School in the town of Caraga in Davao Oriental in the first quarter of 2017 and a flagpole structure at the Mancera Elementary School in Balindog, Kidapawan City.
Aside from the weekly free medical check up, the Foundation where YCI has channeled its CSR fund, has been sustaining its regular medical and feeding missions in the most depressed villages in Cotabato Province.
VISION
YAKI HERBAL LABORATORY envisions to become:
A leading manufacturer of herbal and other health care products in Asia.
MISSION
A safe and effective herbal products that offers affordable alternative health care to the consumers.
GOAL
A complete, highly mechanized, well-maintained machines and skilled personnel with a good, established marketing strategies that can produce and market high quality herbal products.