Entrepreneurship Zone: 03 April 2020: From Economic Empowerment To Waste Management, These 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs Are Making An Impact In Asia

Fri Apr 3 06:53:17 CAT 2020

age credit: Matt Clark

Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia listers in the Social Entrepreneurs category have been dedicating their time to solving the region’s problems and creating opportunities to better the lives of those around them. Farmers especially have been the center of attention for many of this year’s crop of social entrepreneurs.

After 2016’s Typhoon Nock-ten, Louise Mabulo was raising donations for the storm’s victims when she noticed that, while the storm had destroyed about 80% of her town’s rice fields and coconut trees, its cacao trees had survived the onslaught.

So the next years she set up The Cacao Project to get local farmers to plant more of the typhoon-resistant trees. While the typhoon in 2016 was particularly bad, the area of San Fernando, 380 kilometers southeast of Manila, is regularly battered by typhoons. “Every year there’s a typhoon and there’s a need for diversification,” she says.

Registered as a sole proprietorship, the project aims to distribute cacao seedlings for free, buy the raw or semi-processed beans from farmers, and then sell cacao in bulk to local or global buyers. Before getting their seeds, farmers go through intensive training; many lose at least half of the potential harvest to pod rot and other diseases because of faulty growing practices.

Louise Mabulo, founder of the Cacao Project.

 SONNY THAKUR FOR FORBES ASIA

Three years later, The Cacao Project is poised to begin delivering. With the first harvest due later this year, Mabulo expects cacao to become the town’s third-biggest crop, after rice and coconut. “In five to ten years, it has the potential of being the second major crop, surpassing coconuts,” says Mabulo. So far, she has trained 250 farmers who have planted more than 85,000 trees on 85 hectares of their own land. (The project also helps them plant other produce, such as okra and pumpkin, alongside the cacao.)

Mabulo’s project joins government efforts to boost the country’s annual production of cacao beans to 100,000 tonnes by 2022 from only 10,000 tonnes in 2015 amid rising global demand. Mabulo says she has spent close to 1.2 million pesos ($23,000) on seedlings, training and processing facilities, funded mostly by herself, including money from her 2019 United Nations Environmental Program award as a “young champion of the earth.” Mabulo says she’s already firming up deals with local and international buyers, expecting sales of about 11.2 million pesos and a gross margin of around 1 million pesos on this year’s initial harvest. “We have [a customer] who's ordering 100 tonnes of cacao,” she says. “Whatever we can provide, they're willing to buy.”

Also looking to improve lives of farmers are Hong Konger Kisum Chan and Malaysian Lincoln Lee. The duo cofounded Rice Inc, a social enterprise that aims to reduce the loss of rice during harvest by providing farmers with industrial dryers and storage facilities. Through their service, farmers can reduce waste and contamination as rice is often dried on the ground by the sun in many impoverished regions, making harvest vulnerable to poor weather and pests.

The startup, which claims to have helped farmers process 2,250 tons of rice and prevented 200 tons of losses, has won awards including the Hult Prize for student social entrepreneurs and the Norman Borlaug Award for their contributions to agriculture and food production.

Empowering The Disabled

Recognizing that physical impairment shouldn’t be an obstacle in an individual’s pursuit to be self-sufficient and productive, these entrepreneurs are doing their part towards creating a more inclusive society.

Born with hemiplegia (which causes paralysis to one side of the body), Devika Malik is an Indian para-athlete and cofounder of the Wheeling Happiness Foundation. The organization aims to empower people with disabilities, women and those who are economically underserved.

The foundation says it has helped more than 50 people with disabilities to become athletes, one of whom is international para-athlete Shweta Sharma. Besides helping sportspeople, the foundation partners with organizations to distribute some 500 assistive equipment and prosthetic limbs to those living in rural areas in India, helping them to regain mobility.

Also in India, Alina Alam founded MITTI Cafe, which provides people with disabilities a space to be productive and showcase their potential. Today, there are nine cafes and more than 71 adults with physical, intellectual or psychiatric disabilities who run these cafes. Each cafe also provides experiential training to persons with disability and entrepreneurship opportunities for mothers of adults with mental disabilities coming from low-income backgrounds.

Alina Alam, founder of MITTI Cafe.

 SUPPLIED PHOTO

Another social entrepreneur, this time using tech to make an impact, is Mladen Jovanovic. His Australia-based startup, BindiMaps, helps the visually impaired navigate unfamiliar or complex indoor spaces with a navigational mobile app.

The app works by utilizing a network of Bluetooth beacons, a mapping and route-guidance system and smartphone sensors to describe where users are, what is around them and the best way to get to their destination through audio cues. Since launching in 2017, BindiMaps is functional across Australia and has assisted more than 1,600 people to safely reach more than 2,000 destinations.

Tackling Waste

Environmental warriors are plenty on this year’s 30 Under 30 Asia list as well—particularly those working towards finding practical ways to reduce waste on both individual and industrial levels.

Inspired by the carbon credit market, RePurpose Global is a plastic credit platform, founded by Svanika Balasubramanian, Peter Wang Hjemdahl and Aditya Siroya. Like being carbon neutral, RePurpose enables individuals and businesses to become plastic neutral and take responsibility for their plastic footprint by funding recycling of the same amount of plastic waste they produce.

Currently, RePurpose funds plastic recovery projects across six countries and works with companies and organizations like Nestlé, World Wildlife Fund and the World Bank to create an international plastic offset standard. For its efforts, RePurpose was recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme as one of the top 12 innovations in plastic recycling.

Cofounders of rePurpose Global: Peter Wang Hjemdahl, Svanika Balasubramanian and Aditya Siroya.

 SUPPLIED PHOTO

Also in India, Anurag Asati cofounded The Kabadiwala (a Hindustani word meaning “junk or scrap dealer”), which helps people get rid of their household junk, including newspapers and books. The app-based platform helps to streamline the collection of consumer waste, schedule pickups and direct the waste into the recycling network. In return, users are given cash for their scrap based on weight. The Kabadiwala says it has more than 70,000 registered users and helps recycle more than 10 tons of waste daily.

To address waste on an enterprise level, Okka Phyo Maung set up RecyGo, a subscription-based waste management and data analytics platform dedicated to promoting environmentally-friendly recycling solutions for businesses in Myanmar. Services include conducting waste audits and waste segregation, as well as setting up waste segregation bins and waste collection. Currently, the startup provides waste collection and recycling to some 400 companies, including Savoy Hotel, H&M and Panasonic.

Aiming to tackle food waste, TreeDots is a B2B platform that redistributes surplus or imperfect food at discounted prices. The startup, cofounded by Singaporean trio Jia Cai Lau, Nicholas Lim and Tylor Jong, also connects suppliers with extra inventory (including “ugly” food that gets rejected at supermarkets but is edible) to buyers who are looking for cost savings. From 2018 to 2019, TreeDots saved 913 tons of food from ending up in landfills.—Forbes.com

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