Beverly ChungHow I found Ventures in Development (ViD)
I’m writing these entries upon my return back to the US after a summer spent in China with Ventures in Development(ViD). ViD is a start-up, nonprofit business incubator based in Shanghai and Hong Kong, working to alleviate poverty in greater China through the growth of sustainable for-profit businesses. One of the reasons I chose to attend Columbia Business School (CBS) was that I had hoped to find fellow students interested in applying private sector thinking to address prevalent social and environmental issues. My hopes were far exceeded by the community I found through CBS’ Social Enterprise Program, Social Enterprise Club, and International Development Club. This network not only influenced much of my experience first year at CBS, but also led directly to my summer internship.
Prior to CBS, my background had been in domestic health insurance, having worked both in private sector consulting and for the NYC public hospital system. Arriving at CBS, I knew that I wanted to work for a social enterprise over the summer to understand whether it could fit my long-term plans of starting my own social venture. I luckily secured some great offers in this space through on-campus recruiting but all the while wondered whether I could find an experience specifically in China because of my awareness of its rising income inequality and associated social disparities. Knowing of my interest in China and social enterprise, my learning teammate Andrew Umans, another SEP Summer Fellow, informed me of a talk at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affiars (SIPA), where one of the co-founders of ViD was to present the organization and mission.
Coincidentally, I already knew the story behind ViD – Marie So (originally from Hong Kong) and Carol Chyau (originally from Taiwan) both had prior business training and experience, and had conceived the idea for this social enterprise incubator while they were classmates at Harvard’s Kennedy School. With the help of friends at Harvard Business School and Wharton, they drafted a business plan that went on to capture first place in the Social Enterprise track of HBS’ Business Plan Competition. Since then, they went on to win more recognition, including their latest distinction as leading global social entrepreneurs – 2008 Echoing Green Fellows. After hearing Carol speak at SIPA that day, I introduced myself and made the first connection to my internship.
Having grown up in an immigrant Chinese household in the U.S., I spoke fluent Mandarin and knew much about China’s cultural context and current conditions from my parents and relatives. This summer would not be my first time going to China’s cities and rural areas –I had been fortunate enough to visit the country four times already. Weighing my summer options, I approached the professor of my Social Entrepreneurship class, Pamela Hartigan, who was intimately familiar with all the organizations I was considering. She was a big fan of both Ventures in Development and its founders, and reminded me that this summer was an opportunity to explore as many of my career and personal interests as possible; at that point I realized that going to China was the right thing to do.
China Dispatch
China has experienced a meteoritic rise over the past few years, with an economy posting double-digit growth rates. After reforms in the late 1970s, private sector growth largely fueled the engine of this socialist market economy. While incomes have risen across the country and many have benefitted from this growth, participation by rural communities has remained severely limited. Furthermore, many impoverished communities lost their social safety net in the mid-1990s when the Chinese government de-centralized fiscal spending and shifted authority to local governments to fund basic social services like health and education. Outstanding social ills have been exacerbated by increasing environmental degradation.
Economic development has been concentrated along the eastern and southern coast lines, and within large cities in the interior of the country. ViD recognized this basic problem within China’s growing economy – booming urban and coastland areas coupled with inland destitution. Their solution is to “incubate and implement ideas that have potential to become sustainable and socially responsible ventures,” exposing underserved people to the spirit of entrepreneurship. The next step of their solution has been yaks. That’s right, yaks as in the bigger, hairier version of cows!
China is home to 80% of the world’s yak population. While herders depended on yaks for their livelihood (transport, clothing, food), ViD recognized that animals were unique resources and currently underutilized. In fact, yak milk and fiber could produce desirable consumer products, in turn helping the nomads participate actively in the global market. ViD has since helped develop and grow two for-profit enterprises around these animals – cheese made from yak milk and a luxury fiber akin to cashmere, derived from yak down. The fiber is sold in the form of yarn and mostly hand-knit retail products under the brand Shokay. While Shokay products are already sold online and in boutiques across Asia, U.S., Europe, ViD decided to launch its first retail store in Shanghai while I was there this summer. The process of turning yak fiber into a soft, durable luxury fabric benefits several communities. Fiber cooperatives have been formed in the western province of Qinghai, where Shokay has trained over 2,600 nomadic herders to comb and collect wool from their yaks. In addition, Shokay has formed a knitting cooperative from a subsistence farming community on the island of Chong Ming (near Shanghai), where a team of hand knitters helps produce Shokay’s collection of home, kids, and accessory products. Now for my heartfelt, gratuitous plug – please visit www.shokay.com to read more about Shokay’s story and products. Shokay features a spread of household accessories like pillows and throws, baby clothing, and women’s accessories… it’s never too early for holiday shopping!
Like Shokay, Mei Xiang Cheese also has direct impact on nomadic yak herders – these particular families are based in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan. This cheese farm is based in a community so far off the grid that there is just one road leading to it. From the northern town of Shangri-La, we drove for an hour on paved road, and two and a half hours along bumpy dirt and gravel, all the while climbing higher and higher in elevation. I’m not sure what I expected of the cheese farm, but it certainly wasn’t the stately, pristine factory where the cheese is produced, nor the picturesque and welcoming guesthouses and dining hall that comprised the rest of the grounds. Mei Xiang Cheese Factory has become a way station for tourists and other travelers between Shangri-La its neighboring provinces. I spent an incredible four days with the entrepreneurial family running the farm, learning much about their lives before cheese-making had entered the picture, and their new hopes and dreams that built upon the enterprise’s success. It was particularly meaningful to spend time meeting the milk herders, observing the farm operations, and visiting the village where all their relatives still lived. I had spent much of my summer formulating and executing the launch of Mei Xiang yak cheese to the Shanghai market and it was incredibly meaningful to not only see the community that benefited directly from the business, but also understand the key players and factors that made this social enterprise a success. Please visit Mei Xiang’s website to read more about the artisanal cheese products (modeled after an Italian Asiago recipe) and inspiring family behind the business, www.meixiangcheese.com.
This internship also solidified my rationale to attend Columbia Business School, as I was able to directly apply key knowledge I had gained from first year core classes to my summer projects. In particular, my foundation in accounting, operations, marketing, and strategy all came into play as I designed and launched yak cheese sales in Shanghai, defined baseline social and financial metrics to help evaluate ViD’s current portfolio, and provided technical assistance to the entrepreneurial Tibetan family upon our visit to the Cheese farm.
Summer Wrap Up
Over the course of the summer, I observed some ingredients of success for ViD’s enterprises. Foremost, community support and engagement were critical. ViD was also blessed not only with hard-working, visionary leaders and dedicated staff, but also a network of supporters and partners. Indeed, its staff nearly doubled with an influx of summer interns from top tier schools.
ViD is not only up against the basic challenges of running a start-up company, but also the tough Chinese cultural context where traditional mindsets have been prevalent. When I first arrived, I assumed ViD could act as a traditional business incubator- readily sourcing entrepreneurs and cultivating the most promising ones. Instead, ViD itself has had to play role of entrepreneur, growing the very ideas and business models it has found promising. I’ve realized that it is a rare person who can switch their skill set so comprehensively from farming, and subsistence farming at that, to business. As people in rural areas were not fostered in an entrepreneurial climate, ViD has been fortunate to find individuals naturally independent in spirit to staff its enterprises.
All in all, the summer was an amazing experience for me. I realized how the skills of an MBA can be used to build strong enterprises like ViD, Shokay, and Mei Xiang Cheese, while simultaneously making tangible progress towards a social mission. I’ve also had my 15 minutes of fame – the Washington Post interviewed me about Mei Xiang Cheese when I was in town for the Olympics. Read it here and find out the perfect wine to eat with our Cheese for Change! At some level, I hope to always stay involved with ViD as it pursues its exciting mission to develop more social ventures across China.
