The social venture builder
A young man discovers that doing good also makes good business sense, writes
Even less common was organising charity activities, which Redza decided to do. He made a pact with another friend that every weekend, each of them would get five other people to participate in charitable activities. Those activities included visiting orphanages and old folks’ homes or simply helping wherever they could.
This sparked the beginning of his interest in championing social causes. But
Grub homemade pineapple jam. it took a nudge from his boss to get him involved in social entrepreneurship.
THE RELUCTANT ENTREPRENEUR After a stint in the oil and gas industry, Redza had joined an angel investment firm. His job entailed accounting and marketing work, which he was very comfortable with.
However, there was a third responsibility his boss tasked him with, which was to
Grub homemade kimchi. look into the burgeoning social enterprise scene. This was something Redza knew nothing about.
The Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC), the government agency tasked with promoting local startups, was also about to get into social enterprise around that time.
“There was one weekend when they had a three-day social enterprise event,” recalls Redza. “I figured I’d go on Friday and Saturday but would skip it on Sunday so I could play basketball with my friends. I ended up skipping basketball instead!”
One of the key performance indicators (KPIs) his boss gave him was to do a monthly presentation on the social enterprise scene in the country.
In time Redza would become fully immersed in the local social enterprise eco-system and know all the issues and key people involved. After doing this for a year, his boss suggested that he start up a social enterprise himself.
He was reluctant because he had never thought of himself as being particularly entrepreneurial. But MaGIC had just kickstarted an accelerator programme for social enterprise. So the time was ripe for him to take the leap. Still, he hesitated.
“I didn’t want to start something on my own and at the same time, I didn’t think it was a good idea to go into business with friends,” he says ruefully. “It can ruin friendships.”
One day, while attending a charity programme for refugees, he met three other individuals whom he clicked well with and they started talking about starting some venture of their own. They brainstormed for about two months before settling on an idea to pursue.
“We had four ideas and eliminated them in succession until we had just one