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INTERVIEW CEO repositions BNCERA for global markets at Aesthetic Medicine Congress
From left, BNCERA co-founders Andrew Parviz, Fred Bozorov and Jaha Zoda / Courtesy of BNCERA
By Ko Dong-hwan
New Incheon plant boosts quality, consumer trust
BNCERA Aesthetic Medicine Congress 2026 in Incheon was a flashpoint for BNCERA CEO Jaha Zoda and his aesthetic medicine products company. More than 200 physicians, distributors and other industry professionals from 23 countries gathered at Paradise City Hotel from Monday to Friday to hear about the company’s latest breakthroughs.
The event began a day after the company hosted an opening ceremony for its first Korean manufacturing plant in the city’s Namdong District, establishing a pipeline for the company’s product lineup under its Tesoro Pro signature brand including fillers, fat dissolvers and skin boosters.
The congress gave a preview of BNCERA’s next-generation hyaluronic acid filler platform that is now in development. The new ATHEVA lineup is scheduled for market launch next year.
Zoda said the platform’s technological strengths speak for themselves, citing controlled formulation, refined purity, predictable injection behavior and indication-oriented design, while dismissing the superlatives often used in filler marketing.
“We kept asking one question during its development: How does this material actually behave in a physician’s hands?” Zoda said in an interview with The Korea Times. “Not how it looks in a catalogue. We built from the clinical end backward.”
The preview of the upcoming filler is the Tajikistani national’s demonstration of his company’s growing capacity. In the saturated global aesthetic medicine market where launches are frequent and claims are easy, he grounded the new filler platform on his belief that quality is not claimed but engineered.
The congress was larger than a typical one-day formal presentation, said Andrew Parviz, co-CEO of BNCERA. Participants had a chance to visit and tour the new plant, sit through the congress symposium and share dinners with partners from different parts of the world. It was how he and rest of the company’s executives built trust with their partners.
The symposium threw questions at the audience about the current aesthetic medicinal industry worldwide and how a company with willingness and capacity should act. Each of discussion sessions started off with a thought-provoking question, such as, "Does our industry share collective responsibility or does each of us answer only for themselves?" or "If patients knew everything about a product’s composition and manufacturing, would they choose to have more procedures or fewer?" and "Why does packaging still sell better than formula in aesthetic medicine?"
BNCERA executives and team members pose after hosting the BNCERA Aesthetic Medicine Congress 2026. Courtesy of BNCERA
BNCERA, formerly BNC Global, has changed its name amid Korea’s rising exports of beauty and aesthetic medicines. Last year, Korea's exports reached a record-high $11.43 billion, up 12.3 percent from the previous year. The products are now imported to more than 200 countries.
Zoda said the transition to BNCERA was necessary for his company as it was growing to new heights. BNCERA last year posted 77.9 billion won ($53 million) sales and exported to more than 50 countries. It was time for the company to renew its global image by rebranding itself. Behind that measure was a brand philosophy directing the move — "Beauty must be supported by science, system and precision, not by promises."
"We didn't change our name because we wanted to look different. We changed it because the company we've built no longer fits the old name,” Parviz said.