Monthly Archives: March 2023

Singapore IAA SG alumni, we are beyond grateful for your incredible participation in Giving Day 2023. Thanks to your unwavering support, we were able to emerge as the third highest fundraiser globally in terms of the number of donors. Gratefully, INSEAD wins!

Your contributions have made an enormous impact and will help us continue to make a difference in the lives of those we serve. We couldn’t have achieved this without your generous donations and your willingness to spread the word about our cause.

#iaasg #insead #inseadgivingday INSEAD #inseadforgood

We are honoured to announce that ItsRainingRaincoats Ltd
has been named Social Enterprise winner in the IAA Singapore 2023 Business as a Force for Good Awards! These awards honour Singapore-based companies who have:

• Demonstrated thought-leadership with respect to “Business as a Force for Good (BAFG)”
• Created a vision, mission statement and strategy clearly demonstrating their BAFG commitment
• Developed corporate social responsibility best practices
• Achieved remarkable economical results and meaningful societal impact to the BAFG initiatives including but not limited to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Sustainability.

We’ve reviewed the three finalists in the social enterprise category and whilst all presented a compelling programme, the judges were unanimous in the belief that It’s Raining Raincoats has the strongest value proposition to address a pressing societal need, and play the greatest role of Business as a Force For Good.

From a chance encounter with two migrant workers stranded during a rainstorm who were provided refuge and refreshments from the elements, IRR has grown into a powerful force of more than 5000 volunteers helping Singapore’s 1M strong migrant workforce.  IRR not only changes lives, but saves them too, through their unique mix of financial assistance and humanitarian care.  Their common-sense initiatives create real impact on this community from the welfare activities like dental and vision care and the distribution of food and gifts through their store; to interactive activities like regular excursions and seasonal events, to learning programmes like English and first aid classes.  This helps the workers themselves, their families in their home countries and strengthens Singaporean society by giving a hand up to some of our country’s most vulnerable.

It is a moving, impactful and inspirational example, as Margaret Mead said, of “how a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

About ItsRainingRaincoats Ltd

ItsRainingRaincoats is a Singapore charity that aims to build bridges of integration between migrant workers and residents of Singapore. We work to improve their welfare and believe that their seamless integration into our community will benefit not just our migrant workers but Singapore as a whole.

We aim to improve the lives of migrant workers in Singapore, by building bridges to strengthen their integration into our community, city and country. We employ authentic and nimble strategies to help improve the quality of the workers’ lives and make them feel valued, appreciated, safe and welcome in Singapore. Our raincoat emblem symbolizes the protection we provide them from their metaphorical thunderstorms.

We are honoured to announce that SDTR Marine Pte Ltd
has been named Corporate winner in the IAA Singapore 2023 Business as a Force for Good Awards! These awards honour Singapore-based companies who have:

• Demonstrated thought-leadership with respect to “Business as a Force for Good (BAFG)”
• Created a vision, mission statement and strategy clearly demonstrating their BAFG commitment
• Developed corporate social responsibility best practices
• Achieved remarkable economical results and meaningful societal impact to the BAFG initiatives including but not limited to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Sustainability.

SDTR has a clear strategy to doing Good. The Company name SDTR is from the Chinese character (善待他人) which translates into being good to others. The company has strong influence on its identified societal challenges. The initiatives are bold and could drive meaningful impact to its industry. Looking forward to SDTR achieving stronger business performance through these CSR initiatives. The idea around innovative source of energy is interesting and could be impactful.

SDTR interest in addressing the SDG’s goals shows commitment to improving their impact as a business.

About SDTR Marine Pte Ltd

SDTR is recognized to be a leading company in the dry-bulk marine industry. Besides providing excellence services, SDTR strives to continuously upgrade and innovate its fleet to improve energy usage efficiency and using sustainable energy.

SDTR, with her partners, co-developed the world first methanol dual fuel bulker design, which is a significant milestone towards a zero-emission fleet; promoted and created the first carbon neutral shipping party in Singapore, using carbon credits from Indonesia’s Peatland restoration and conservation and improving more than 23,000 community members well-being in that region; and supported SCB’s first Asian sustainability financial fund for SDG projects.

We are honoured to announce that Hydroleap Pte Ltd has been named SME winner in the IAA Singapore 2023 Business as a Force for Good Awards! These awards honour Singapore-based companies who have:

• Demonstrated thought-leadership with respect to “Business as a Force for Good (BAFG)”
• Created a vision, mission statement and strategy clearly demonstrating their BAFG commitment
• Developed corporate social responsibility best practices
• Achieved remarkable economical results and meaningful societal impact to the BAFG initiatives including but not limited to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Sustainability.

We are pleased to announce that HydroLeap has been selected as the award winner for BAFG 2023 (SME). The selection committee was impressed with HydroLeap’s ability to solve an important problem with significant societal impact through its innovative water treatment technology. HydroLeap has demonstrated commercial success, and the significant market opportunity for their product was also noted. Additionally, HydroLeap’s technological solution is unique and difficult to replicate, giving them a strong advantage in the market. We congratulate HydroLeap on their well-deserved recognition and look forward to seeing their continued impact.

The selection committee also wants to provide an honorable mention to SepPure for their highly impactful solution, bringing circularity in a highly scalable way to the distillation process present food, pharma, and petrochemical industries.

About Hydroleap Pte Ltd

Hydroleap is a Singapore-grown technology company reimagining how the world deals with wastewater. Everyone is talking about climate change and doing better for the environment. Hydroleap’s deep technical expertise allows it to design modularized electrical treatment processes and deliver innovative wastewater treatment systems, offering solutions that are high-performance, automated, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly.

Hydroleap is a business that does good for its customers (lowering total cost of ownership, recycling) while doing good for the environment. We are replacing chemicals and energy-intensive processes with low-powered electrical technology for water and wastewater treatment.

In the past few years, a number of international companies have been onboarded on this journey such as CapitaLand, Universal Robina Corporation (URC), PUB, two of the blue-chip companies, etc.

We are honoured to announce that Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India has been named Angels/VC/PE/Accelerator winner in the IAA Singapore 2023 Business as a Force for Good Awards! These awards honour Singapore-based companies who have:

• Demonstrated thought-leadership with respect to “Business as a Force for Good (BAFG)”
• Created a vision, mission statement and strategy clearly demonstrating their BAFG commitment
• Developed corporate social responsibility best practices
• Achieved remarkable economical results and meaningful societal impact to the BAFG initiatives including but not limited to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Sustainability.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is creating impact through their investment into emerging markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam and India. Their investment is aligned to UN SDGs and addresses the challenges in Economic Empowerment, MSME Enablement and Inclusion and have created 5 digits jobs and served millions of individual and MSMEs from developing markets. Their inclusion included Female Founders and Female workforce through highlighting their successes and creating quarterly forums to help them learn from subject experts. They are also caring for the wider community set aside time to support and mentor founders across the region such as “Makan for Hope in 2021” and “Mentor for Hope in 2020”.

About Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India invests in high-growth start-ups seeking their first round of institutional venture capital funding in Southeast Asia and India. It has a long and strong track record of investing in early-stage startups and building champions like Grab, Patsnap, 17Live, Nium, FirstCry, Licious, the Parentinc, Validus, and others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg/

We are honoured to announce that Green Rebel Foods Pte Ltd has been named Startup winner in the IAA Singapore 2023 Business as a Force for Good Awards! These awards honour Singapore-based companies who have:

• Demonstrated thought-leadership with respect to “Business as a Force for Good (BAFG)”
• Created a vision, mission statement and strategy clearly demonstrating their BAFG commitment
• Developed corporate social responsibility best practices
• Achieved remarkable economical results and meaningful societal impact to the BAFG initiatives including but not limited to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Sustainability.

Green Rebel stands out with its focus and endeavour to address the vital societal challenge of providing sustainable food options to consumers in Southeast Asia and beyond. Very clear, well-articulated presentation that was all encompassing. It was evident how the team embedded impact measures and values within their organization – from governance, board member expertise, inclusivity to operational KPIs. There was evidence of the great work by the team in their steady progress since launch. Their dedication to societal impact covers their entire value chain starting with leveraging local expertise that benefits farmers all the way to the individual consumers’ dining table.

The company’s unique approach of democratising plant-based food and flexitarian diets in the region by using natural ingredients to create delicious and authentic Asian-inspired flavors is truly innovative.
Backed by quantified societal impact, it lent greater gravitas and confidence in their venture. Impressive work! The company has the potential to be a catalyst for substantial economic benefits and impact, as well as its recognition as a sustainable innovator, which were key factors in its selection as the winner in this year’s Start-Up BAFG Awards.

About Green Rebel Foods Pte Ltd

An established social impact entrepreneur in Indonesia, Helga Angelina Tjahjadi is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Founder of Green Rebel — Asia’s leading alt-protein brand that offers whole-cut, plant-based meat alternatives for the consumer in search of a healthier flexitarian diet.

A champion of a plant-centric, flexitarian diet, Indonesia-born Helga spearheads Green Rebel’s growth and expansion within Indonesia and beyond, working with dynamic teams in markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and more.

#bafg #iaasg

Meet the 2023 Executive Committee:

#iaasg

We kicked off our Business As A Force For Good awards ceremony with a panel discussion titled “Empower yourself: Overcome challenges and implement sustainable practices in business” and had the honor of having distinguished speakers from different industry background talk about how corporations may improve our society and environment:

• Esther An, Chief Sustainability Officer of City Developments Limited
• Eu-Lin Fang, Partner, Sustainability and Climate Change Practice Leader of PwC Singapore
• Paul Blackler, Sustainability & Innovation Lead of PALO IT
• Shoko Suzuki, Chief Transformation Officer, Head of New Business & ESG of Unilever
• Manik Saha, Managing Director of SAP Labs Singapore as our moderator

Each speaker started off by introducing how they approach sustainability in their own respective company and later shared about their top-of-mind issues that they are concerned with. The ABCD framework – Alignment, Business, Collaboration and Disclosure – was discussed as a potential approach to address sustainability concerns. Alignment of business model to industrial, national and international goals is key and so is the importance of developing a business case for sustainability which references to the triple bottom line theory. Collaboration along the entire value chain is essential to ensure that interest of every stakeholder is aligned and there is a need to improve transparency of sustainability reporting through disclosures.

Sustainability is still a relatively new field in this day and age that comes with a lot of ambiguity. There is no single path to adopt sustainability and an effective climate strategy requires resilience and adaption. Throughout the session, there were a lot of discussions regarding the huge challenge in this field given that there are over 600 different frameworks and sustainability guidelines.

There is clearly a need for standardization to simplify the reporting which can aid corporations to set goals, establish priorities and manage change. From this panel discussion, we learned about how each stakeholder can contribute to this process:

• Academia can play a critical role to clarify the roles for all stakeholders.
• Industry players can also create an industry consortium to set a common standard, but it is essential to first encourage corporations to collaborate with each other

#iaasg #bafg

Dear Members,

Our theme last year was “Engaging Our Members”. We are thrilled to report on the success we achieved. In our association, our 100+ volunteers graciously volunteered their time to organize 73 events, giving our alumni ample opportunities to connect, engage and thrive.

This year, our Executive Committee has set a bold new theme: “Building Bridges.” Our aim is to engage our members in more meaningful ways to promote positive impact. To achieve these goals, we need your help.

We welcome you, our valued members, to join us on this adventure. Our new initiatives include IN-Board, Career Development Coaching, and many other events and projects. We are open to new ideas and energy, so please share your suggestions .

Help us build bridges that will connect us to each other and to the world. Together, we can continue to make the INSEAD Alumni Association of Singapore, a shining example of what can be accomplished when a community comes together.

We hereby present our 2023 Executive Committee. Committee members do stand up so that our members can approach you to help us embark on another exciting journey building bridges for growth, learning and positive impact.

Let’s be amazing, together!

#iaasg