The Business of Doing Good

Speaker Profiles

Mr Ang Kian Peng
Samsui Supplies

Mr Ankit Agarwal
Founder & CEO, HelpUsGreen

Pioneered the flowercycling® technology to preserve the River Ganges from becoming a religious sewer and awarded as A World Changing Idea 2018 by the Fast Company, HelpUsGreen is the world’s first lean and replicable solution to the ‘monumental temple waste problem’. Ankit is an Echoing Green fellow and was recently named in the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list. He has received the prestigious United Nations Young leader for Sustainable Development Goals award 2018 and the GSG Millennial Honour 2018.

Mr Mark Cheng
Senior Advisor, Ashoka

Mark is a Senior Advisor at Ashoka, the global network of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. At Ashoka, Mark specialises in social finance, and has advised many leading social entrepreneurs on their capital raising strategies. Mark is an active social investor who has advised and invested in more than 50 social ventures over the past decade. Mark is also the author of the ‘Social Investment Toolkit’ which is a free online guide for social entrepreneurs looking to raise investment. He is based in Hong Kong and London and writes and speaks frequently on social innovation and finance. Prior to joining Ashoka, Mark began his career as an investment banker. He can be found on twitter @chelcap.

Ms Pornthida Palmmy Wongphatharakul
Co-Founder and CMO, Siam Organic

A social enterprise that aims to reduce farmer poverty in a sustainable, scalable and irreversible manner with a social business model, Siam Organic has been bringing innovative, healthy, and delicious products to the global consumers under brand Jasberry. Since its establishment in 2011, Siam Organic is now working with over 2,500 small-scale farmers in North East, the most impoverished region in Thailand. Prior to Siam Organic, Palmmy was a financial consultant, and met her business partner while taking an MBA at Sasin School of Management in Bangkok.

Exhibitor Profiles

RETHINK BUSINESS MODEL

Eden Strategy Institute

Consumers, employees, and citizens are increasingly expecting positive societal contribution from the organisations they engage with. Eden Strategy Institute helps companies craft authentic value propositions, including strategies, offerings, networks, collaboration models, organisational cultures, and brands that resonate deeply with purpose-driven aspirations, to forge the social compact between leaders and their constituents.

BCorp

B Corps form a community of leaders and drive a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
 

COLLABORATE WITH SOCIAL ENTERPRISES

Edible Garden City

Edible Garden City champions the grow-your-own-food movement in cities around the world, starting with Singapore. They have designed and built over 50 beautiful and productive food gardens in tropical Singapore for our clients: restaurants, schools, hotels, and residences. Edible Garden City also supply fresh herbs, flowers, and vegetables to food and beverage outlets, for beauty and skincare products and, in the near future, homes. Creating and running farming workshops for schools and the community have enabled them to develop an urban farming model, Citizen Farm. It is a community of local farmers that produces fresh, tasty and nutritious harvests that are available to everyone living in the city.

Sampurn(e)arth

Sampurn(e)arth Tackles the problems of waste management through the prism of environmental sustainability and social good, while being profitable and technology-driven. Through a

combination of decentralised and centralised waste management systems, it hopes to see a world where the word “waste” is replaced by “resource”. Over the years, Sampurn(e)arth received mentorship and guidance from DBS on structuring various business lines and financing options, such as working capital and bill discounting. Sampurn(e)arth was also hired by DBS to manage wet and dry waste from DBS’ India headquarters at Express Towers, Mumbai.

Samsui Supplies

Samsui Supplies : Samsui Suppliers and Services (SSS) is a group company of Soup Restaurant Group and runs the successful chain of “Soup Restaurants” in the region.  Since 2013, the group has been serving quality meals to beneficiaries of nursing homes and voluntary welfare organisations.  In 2016 they served an estimated 500,000 meals to beneficiaries all over Singapore.  In recognition of their efforts, SSS received the President’s Volunteerism and Philanthropy Award 2016 for SMEs and were cited in the Finance minister’s budget speech as an inspiring example of a company contributing to society.

Yonah

Yonah is dedicated to tackling the challenges in transporting critical medicines and vaccines in rural and inaccessible areas. Yonah is currently developing turn-key cargo drones infrastructure with smaller ground footprint requirements, affordability (less than SGD50 per flight/hour); Yonah is seeking to transform healthcare in remote areas. They are empowering communities with autonomous technologies that will overcome access barriers in some of the most under-developed regions.
 

SUPPORT SOCIAL ENTERPRISES

The Kommon Goods

The Kommon Goods is a lifestyle brand that produces eco-friendly everyday products such as metal straws, bamboo toothbrushes, water bottles, bamboo utensils, and more. At present, they ship globally and make customisable products for corporates, restaurants and hotels.

Siam Organic

Siam Organic works to alleviate poverty among farmers in Thailand by bringing delicious, healthy and innovative products, including organic Jasberry rice, to global consumers. Siam Organic works with farmers from the north-eastern part of Thailand to reduce farming input costs, increase yield and guarantee purchase price, making rice farming a sustainable occupation.

Siam Organic is currently working with over 1,000 small-scale farmers who are achieving 14 times higher incomes compared to an average Thai rice farmer; the farmer's’ daily income has risen from USD 0.40 to USD 6. Besides the increase in their income, health conditions of farmers and their families have improved, thanks to the nutritious Jasberry rice that they grow.

Mycotech

On a mission to deliver sustainable material from renewable resources with affordability, Mycotech utilized mushroom fermentation to convert agricultural waste into a low-cost building material. Started out as mushroom gourmet producers in 2012, the team found out that mushrooms could save the world.

HelpusGreen

HelpusGreen was on a mission to preserve the river Ganges and empower vernacular people by providing a means to earn their livelihood became a reality. Today, HelpUsGreen has own much more than the two people it started with but their spirit of adventure that began at the Ghats of the Ganges flourishes every day. “Phool”, their FMCG brand, has been launched with rudimentary concepts and inadequate resources. Founder, Ankit Agarwal received the UN Momentum of Change Award and the UN Young Leader Award to champion Women’s Rights. Chosen through a rigorous selection process from 8000 global changemakers globally for his committed, inspiring and innovative work, Ankit is also a DBS Foundation grant awardee.

Media Coverage