From agriculture to biotechnology, and from nature to everyday wellness

Back to the Orchard

How RAWGA founder Kyungsoo Ha brought three generations of agricultural experience into biotechnology.

Long before he founded RAWGA, Kyungsoo Ha learned a lesson in his family’s orchard: do everything within your control, and see it through.

His family had worked in agriculture for three generations. His father tended fruit trees while continuously experimenting with new seeds, crops, and cultivation methods. As a child, Ha helped with the work. When reflective film needed to be laid beneath the trees, he stayed until the job was finished.

A good harvest was never guaranteed. Weather could change the outcome despite months of careful cultivation. What mattered was taking responsibility for the work, even when the result remained uncertain.

Years later, that lesson would shape the way Ha built RAWGA.

The Road Back to Agriculture

Agriculture was not the path Ha initially chose.

While at university, he opened a lunchbox shop and later a fried-chicken restaurant. Both businesses eventually closed. He then joined the new business divisions at 11st and Coupang, where he learned how products find their place in the market.

At Coupang, managing agricultural and food categories brought him back into contact with farming—from the other side of the supply chain.

He began to understand why growing an excellent crop did not always mean its value would reach consumers. Distribution, pricing, and marketing could shape a product’s success as much as the ingredient itself.

After leaving Coupang, Ha launched a business connecting regional farmers directly with consumers. But he came to believe that changing distribution alone could not resolve the structural limitations facing agriculture.

He returned to the field with a question that would become the starting point for RAWGA:

Could the plants we grow offer more than food—and create greater value for healthier lives?

Choosing to Grow It Himself

In 2017, Ha’s search for an answer took him to Laos, where RAWGA began cultivating hibiscus on a local organic farm.

Buying existing ingredients would have been faster and simpler. Growing them meant taking responsibility for cultivation, harvesting, and quality management. Ha chose the longer route because he believed the quality of a bio-based ingredient began well before it reached a laboratory.

He wanted to understand the soil, the growing conditions, and the timing of the harvest. Direct involvement in cultivation would also give RAWGA greater control over the material entering research and manufacturing.

For Ha, this approach grew naturally from his experience in the orchard. To understand what a plant could become, he first needed to understand how it grew.

The farm became the beginning of RAWGA’s research.

The Question Hidden in Hibiscus

While processing the hibiscus RAWGA had grown, Ha noticed the distinctive sticky texture of the material left after juicing. He wondered whether something valuable remained in what might otherwise be discarded.

Around the same time, a Muslim acquaintance told him that religious and dietary restrictions prevented him from consuming animal-derived collagen.

The conversation connected a possibility in the field with an unmet need in everyday life. Ha began asking whether hibiscus could offer a plant-derived alternative.

To investigate, he began working with a chemical engineer who had spent more than thirty years researching collagen. Ha brought his knowledge of agriculture and the market; the engineer brought the expertise to test the idea scientifically.

Turning that question into an ingredient required patient work: analyzing hibiscus, identifying relevant compounds, establishing processing conditions, and developing a way to reproduce consistent quality at scale.

Ha’s observation had opened the door. Research would determine where it could lead.

From Observation to VC-H1

After nearly two years of research, the team confirmed the potential in 2019. In 2021, RAWGA secured patents covering the manufacturing technology and raw material.

The result was VC-H1®, a hibiscus-derived plant-based collagen peptide.

In 2022, VC-H1 received the Innovation Award in the Ingredients category at SIAL Paris, earning international recognition.

For Ha, the achievement gave tangible form to the question that had brought him back to agriculture. A plant grown and understood firsthand could become the foundation for an ingredient with new functions and greater value.

It also encouraged him to look further. RAWGA expanded its research to natural sources including carrots, sesame, ginseng, and canola, exploring what other plants might offer.

The work followed a connected path—from cultivation to research, from research to manufacturing, and ultimately to products people could use.

What Ha Wants to Leave Behind

Looking back, Ha sees continuity across the three generations of his family.

His grandfather established their agricultural roots. His father explored new crops and cultivation methods. Ha is carrying that work into science, technology, and manufacturing.

The methods have changed, but he is still asking how to bring the value of agriculture further into people’s lives.

For him, that ambition carries a responsibility to earn trust. If RAWGA calls an ingredient exceptional, it should know where and how it began. If it develops a technology, the work should be supported by research and results. And if it speaks about healthier living, its ingredients should create meaningful value in everyday life.

Ha hopes to build a company that might one day inspire someone to say:

“Because of RAWGA, I lived a little healthier—and a little better.”

That ambition reaches far beyond the orchard where he grew up. Yet the way he approaches it remains familiar: observe carefully, take responsibility, and see the work through.

For Kyungsoo Ha, RAWGA is how the next chapter of farming begins.