SINGAPORE - Kindness is not an element in many business plans but it is front and centre for entrepreneur Bernice Tan.
Ms Tan is the founder and chief executive of the Kind Citizen, which provides a platform so people can do small favours for others, such as buying a cup of coffee for healthcare workers, donating to the taxi fares for those with limited mobility or sponsoring haircuts for the beneficiaries.
She believes that a business should go hand in hand with creating a social impact: "Kind Citizen was created partly due to the needs of our society amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We want businesses to have a consolidated platform to support the community, especially those affected by the pandemic and individuals who are not part of the social assistance structure.
"By focusing not only on food but also on providing essential lifestyle support such as communications, ambulance services and rewarding frontliners, we want people to see that businesses and the community are evolving as a whole."
She adds: "There are more companies that are increasingly aware that they can do more for the community with their own products and services".
The business was born in early 2020 with start-up capital of around $100,000. It also had support from the Our Singapore Fund for Digital Readiness Projects run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority.
Ms Tan, 39, is running it mainly with the help of family members and volunteers.
Ms Tan's previous endeavour was to help set up Y Waste in early 2019 - a food wastage reduction solution system that is running in Australia and New Zealand.
"It's always been my desire to allow people to see kindness in others, even if it is just on a random basis," she says.
"By having just a little compassion towards others, we could make it easier when life gets hard - especially during this pandemic period."
Ms Tan, who is single, was born in Johor but is now a Singapore citizen. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Royal Holloway University of London.
She also has certifications in ESG and Sustainable Business from Singapore Management University and a certificate in Leadership in Community and Charities from the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Q: What's the next stage of growth for your businesses?
A: Kind Citizen aims to leverage the support from our list of "kind merchants" - businesses that are highly supportive of the local community. Consumers could shop on our website while participating in community-based retail campaigns, such as joint donations, for instance.
Q: What's in your portfolio?
A: As an advocate of society and sustainability, I trade green energy products mainly on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, such as Global X China Electric Vehicle exchange-traded funds and in Ganfeng Lithium (Chinese lithium company).
The annual returns are estimated on average at 22 per cent. There is no specific allocation on investments.
For real estate, I have a small apartment on the fringe of the city for myself, and a property for my parents in Malaysia. My family and I mainly own agricultural land for premium Durian planting and factories in the southern part of Malaysia, as my father has currently retired in Johor.
Q: What are your immediate investment plans?
A: There are no specific plans apart from working on Kind Citizen, which requires more bootstrapping and investments from myself to grow.
Q: How did you get interested in investing?
A: I've always been an ambitious risk-taker. My "hobby" has always been focused on business. I started a small engineering business at the age of 22 and made a decent income at that time of $250,000 a year. That was when I wanted to increase my liquidity. So I got involved in day trading in US blue-chip equities.
Q: Describe your investing strategy.
A: For stocks, I attended many training sessions so I would say I'm pretty proficient in reviewing technical charts as well as some useful tools such as TradingView. Hence, I'm totally independent in managing my own portfolio.
Meanwhile, green energy investments are the future trend.
Q: What else is in your financial plan?
A: I do have plans for a family but I don't think I would talk about this due to the many uncertainties now.
Q: How are you planning for retirement?
A: I would like to have a proper review of my retirement plan in two years, but nothing has been well planned as I'm also thinking about moving to another country if business opportunities come up.
Q: Moneywise, what were your growing-up years like?
A: My father was a shipyard manager and he did his best to provide for me and my younger brother. My father did not have a business background and because of our family and my mother's health condition, he couldn't afford to take risks and run a business, even though he also has great business sense.
He used his hard earned savings to make the right investment, including investing in my uncle's startup that got listed recently. This turned his RM100,000 into a good sum that ensured his financial freedom and comfortable retirement last year.
I also used to travel to Malaysia every weekend to spend time with my dog.
Q: What does money mean to you?
A: I don't own any fancy goods, and even my vegan leather purse is $30.
For me, money means freedom, stability and enjoyable experiences. I spend on high-quality food, unique trips off the beaten path, sports and helping others.
It's never about trying to impress someone. To me, money is a manifestation of happiness because it gives me what I enjoy most.
Q: Home is now ...
A: A small, three-room high-rise apartment in Novena that I'm living in myself and with my plants.
Q: I drive ...
A: I had been driving the classic Volkswagen beetle for a number of years right after I graduated, as I was involved in a sales role.
But with the convenience of Grab, I gave up my vehicle and I strangely really enjoy public transport with people watching.
I currently own a mountain bike as transport as well, as I ride to town almost every day for my martial arts training.
Best and worst bets
Q: What has been your biggest investing mistake?
A: I lost my entire $100,000 contract for differences portfolio because I assumed that my blue-chip trading would not fluctuate too much, such as by more than a 20 per cent difference in a day.
Even though I was not in debt, the $100,000 from 15 years ago was a lot of money that was supposed to be used for a condominium investment.
Instead, I lost it within a few days.
That is why today, I have acquired technical knowledge instead of the mentality of hoping for the best.
I would say that it is different from gambling as I know what I'm doing with investing. I also no longer run any day trading or invest in the US market (with evening stocks), as there is only so much we can do in a day and I need to focus on my day's work.
If I can't fully focus or understand the market well enough, I might as well not get into it at all.
Q: And your best investment?
A: I have an old-fashioned answer - to invest in myself. The first step is questioning ourselves - how well do we know ourselves and the level of risk we are willing to take? How much do we know the market, and what is the best thing we can do for the best outcome?
For instance, Kind Citizen has never been considered a typical investable tech start-up by venture capital firms from the beginning, and it probably is still not one.
The reason I am seeing myself through this difficult journey is because I would like to understand the kindness movement from the standpoint of society.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment