December 2025 Amber Grant Awarded to Iconicake

Video Transcript

Jama: Hi everyone. My name is Jama with WomensNet, and I am excited to connect with you all today to meet our December 2025 winners. We have an awesome group of women that are going to talk to us about the creative and wonderful things that they’re doing. All of their products are things that inspire joy and brighten our lives, and so we’re so happy to have them with us. And so today we have with us Selva, with Iconicake. She’s our Amber Grant winner. And then we have with us Kristen, with Desert Bloom, and Kristen is our category winner. So in December, that category was fashion and interior design. And so thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.We do have our Startup winner, that’s Chitsanzo, and she’s with Duplii. She will be submitting a video with her responses so that we can get to know her a little bit. So to begin, let’s start with our Amber Grant winner, Selva. Can you please tell us a little bit about your business?

Selva: Yes. I was raised by a single mom who was new to the country, and money was tight growing up. So it led me to learn how to creatively solve my needs, especially cravings with limited resources that I had in an easy bake oven that I got for Christmas. I would bake using whatever ingredients I could find in the kitchen, experimenting and learning as I went, growing up fast. And developing that creativity with food is what ultimately inspired me to create Iconicake. And so Iconicake is my company that creates DIY dessert mixes with no refined sugar. Our proprietary formula uses real fruits, vegetables, and nutrient rich grains that reduce sugar by 25 to 50%, while still delivering the nutrients of one to two cups of salad per serving. The result is this familiar comforting dessert that supports digestion, balanced energy, and everyday wellness. Without that blood sugar spike or digestive issues at the heart of Iconicake, it is my desire to create this gentle life time lifestyle change- not one that’s rooted in aggressive transformation or restriction. My vision is to help people feel safe having an Iconicake product in their pantry. 

For example, if someone enjoyed something indulgent like a fried Mars bar at a carnival the day before, I never want them to feel guilty or fall into the cycle of, “so now I wanna strictly restrict”- that mindset isn’t sustainable long term. Instead, Iconicake becomes that security blanket, the option that lets you say, “I can have a triple chocolate caramel sundae today, but for the rest of the week I’ll have Iconicakes, muffins, and maybe some fruits on the side.” So you can enjoy something that’s unconventional, indulgent that you love- and still come back to Iconicake as a nourishing, supportive choice. It’s about moderation, comfort, and feeling supported while making those small positive changes over time. Thank you.

Jama: Wonderful. Thank you so much. That made me hungry! Healthy Cake. I love it. Can you please tell us what makes your business approach and your product different from other products that are doing something similar?

Selva: So, what makes Iconic Cake different is our ability to combine nostalgia with innovation. While many dessert brands focus on trends, marketable restrictions, or pure indulgence, we focus on creating a balanced experience through recognizable flavors, familiar textures, and thoughtful branding. Each product is carefully crafted to taste as close as possible to the classic treats people already know and love. And we give consumers the freedom to choose whether they want to pursue a very clean healthy lifestyle, or a moderately balanced one that still allows them for indulgence. What makes our approach truly unique is that we pair that nostalgic taste and texture with real nutrition, and nutritionists even recommend our products privately. Currently in Canada, we do have a waiting list for the United States. Every serving contains over 20 essential vitamins and minerals suitable for both children and adults. And in this case, the positioning of our products is not marketed as low calorie sugar free or fat free- or built around restrictive diets. Iconicake instead offers this gentle more inclusive approach to wellness. By combining the natural ingredients with food science, we’ve created something entirely new. From our research, it shows that products like Iconicake does not exist in the Canadian, American or European markets. Rather than asking people to give something up entirely, Iconicake supports this natural organic transition, allowing people to enjoy desserts they love while making realistic, sustainable and better improvements to their overall health without making those huge sacrifices, like I mentioned.

Jama: I love that. And I love, especially the fact that taste was something that was also so big for you. So you can have the nostalgia of a chocolate or a vanilla cake and not feel like you still missed out in some way. And so that’s really wonderful. It’s sounds like a very satisfying dessert. I can’t wait to try some! And so let’s go on to a lesson learned story. We would love to hear one. Can you please tell us something that you learned that maybe you wish you hadn’t learned, but you learned anyways, and can share it with our network?

Selva: Yeah, it’s actually a very deep question. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is the importance of listening to what genuinely excites you, especially the passions you had as a child. After reading countless interviews, like during my adulthood and essays from successful founders and fulfilled professionals who worked for great organizations, I noticed a common thread. Many of them had built careers aligned with what they loved long before success or money entered in the picture. And I feel like women often get drowned in responsibilities and societal pressures a lot more sooner than our counterparts. And too, often I felt like those early passions, especially for me, got buried under outside opinions of fear of failure or the pressure to chase financial security. And then as a child, I was deeply creative and obsessed with food, art, and chemistry. But because those interests didn’t fit neatly together and into a safe or traditional career path, I was encouraged out of good intentions to pursue something more financially safe and viable to pay my bills.

And for years I carried that quiet what if question in the back of my mind, which caused a lot of internal friction wondering what might have been possible if I had trusted those instincts earlier. And eventually I just bit the bullet. I was like, “Ugh, you live life once.” And decided to just listen to the child in me who loved creating, experimenting, and building something beautiful and meaningful. Finally when I took that leap, I was surprised by how quickly things began to grow and change. So my biggest lesson is that it’s never too late. Your heart already knows what it wants. And one of my favorite founders, Steve Jobs, he once said, “It’s not about finding the answer. It’s about having the courage to trust it, follow it, make informed decisions, and most importantly, take a lot of action.”

Jama: Well said. Thank you so much. Here you have it, our December 2025 winners- our Amber Grant winner and our Business Category winner. And as I mentioned before, our Startup grant winner will be submitting a video with her responses. And so we look forward to getting that. And so thank you so much for taking the time.