After working in the finance field for about a decade, Sasibai Kimis quit her job and on Valentines' Day in 2013 she founded Earth Heir Partners as an enterprise that would not only make money but also would do something good for society.
"I sort of came to the point in my life where I started thinking about what legacy I'm leaving behind in the world, whether I'm just building wealth by myself or trying to grow other people. That was the beginning of my desire to do something more," the Malaysian entrepreneur recalls.
First she went to Cambodia where she taught English, helped build schools and met with families who had lost children to trafficking. She also found that despite the country's rich weaving heritage, Cambodian people could not make enough money from the craft. She started buying their products to help them but realised that doing it for charity would not bring a sustainable impact.
"I realised soon that you cannot continue to help people as a hobby. If you want to make real change, you have to make it as a business. I'm not interested in the traditional form of business and I'm not interested in being a charity. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to start a social enterprise," she told Asia Focus.
Today, fashion, interior design and office products sold by Earth Heir are procured from communities in Cambodia as well as India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and a few other countries. The social enterprise (SE) also helps local artisans with product design. With only two full-time employees, three part-timers and three interns, Earth Heir is financially sustainable from its own revenue.
"Because I come from a corporate background, my focus is pretty much on transforming, how companies see these social impacts," said Ms Kimis, a Wharton School graduate. "Right now companies think that if they want to have social impact, it's a CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiative. Then it becomes charity, a philanthropic thing.
"That's great and needed but it's not going to create changes. What will happen when you are no longer there? Who is going to keep helping those people? So I think there is a great need for social enterprises to fill the gap.
"Buying cheap products from a factory in China, while the factories in China are benefiting, the poor people in your own countries are not benefiting. So why not help people in your own countries or even in other Asean countries? You can actually combine what you need with also doing good.
"My biggest desire is that I want to be a champion for a Malaysian brand based in Asia. For me as a Malaysian, I want to tell people, 'Look, there are very talented Asian people. We have a lot of innovations and skills and we can create products that have great design, and we ourselves can be the champions for people in other Asean nations to grow.'"
Sasibai Kimis (right), founder of Earth Heir Partners, takes part in a discussion at the SE forum.
Ms Kimis made the comments on the sidelines of the Asian Women Social Entrepreneurs Network Conference held in Bangkok. Organised by the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women (APSW), the three-day event was supported by the Nippon Foundation to promote female social entrepreneurs in the Mekong Subregion who are doing work that promotes community wellbeing.
While the SE field is gaining recognition as a sustainable solution to pressing social problems, in many Mekong countries there is no legal support or policy framework for the promotion of SEs. Such entrepreneurs, especially women, need help developing their skills so that they can be at the forefront in contributing to economic growth, alleviating social problems, narrowing gaps between men and women and moving toward a more equitable society.
According to ChangeFusion, a Bangkok-based organisation that specialises in the SE field, SEs share common characteristics. For example, they set out to address specific social and environmental challenge, employ a clear business model, do not rely on philanthropy alone, deliver measureable social and environmental impacts, and are sustainable.
Small size is another common characteristic, given the newness of the field. In Indonesia, for example, 76% of SEs are in their early stages, said Chitpong Kittinaradorn, assistant to the managing director of ChangeFusion.
"If you look at Thailand, more than half of the SEs employed fewer than 20 people. That's a very small group," he said.
In Indonesia, there are 500 SEs but thousands more are not quite there yet, according to a 2015 study by the Boston Consulting Group. Among the established SEs is Proviso Education which provides training and educational performance improvement programmes in distant and underprivileged schools, paid for by private sponsors. Another is Javara, which sources, produces and sells organic agriculture products in partnerships with communities for the local market and for export.
There are roughly 30,000 SEs in the Philippines. Most are cooperatives and associations concentrated in Manila, Cebu and Davao. The large number reflects the fact that the country has a large number of microfinance institutions, totalling 500, with a strong emphasis on addressing poverty, Mr Chitpong said.
Human Nature, for example, is a cosmetics SE that sources community-produced organic ingredients. It has become a successful local brand with 26 branches, selling 16 million items in less than five years. Rags2Rich helps poor mothers by employing them to make fashion products, including bags and pillows, for distribution through its global network.
Meanwhile, SEs in Thailand were traditionally setup by non-profit groups to finance their activities, and royal projects that have some business links. Doi Tung, for instance, was originally set up as a royal project and has expanded substantially by working with marginalised hilltribe populations in the North to produce coffee and cold-climate fruits as well as fashion products for urban markets via its coffee chain and retail stores.
Of the 10,000 SEs in Thailand, mostly community enterprises and cooperatives, nearly one third are in the Bangkok area. Around half are small with annual revenue of less than US$60 million and employing 20 people or fewer.
Thailand is now seeing a new generation of SEs aiming to do something good and to be financially self-sustainable. Some listed Thai companies have also created SEs as separate business entities. Both local and international investment funds are also emerging to accommodate SEs, for example, Banpu Champion for Change, ChangeVentures, LGT Philantrophy, Oxfam, and ChangeFusion, added Mr Chitpong.
Other examples of SEs are Lemon Farm -- a health product and retail chain that connects organic and community-produced food and cosmetic products -- and OpenDream, which develops internet-based solutions such as mobile apps and games to address social issues from sex education to real-time and cross-border disease surveillance system. Look Alike, meanwhile, works with grassroots communities to organise community-based tourism packages and connect them to corporate trips and international markets.
In Vietnam, there are over 200 active SEs with additional 35,000 potential ones. They are primarily focused on agriculture, education, vocational training, health and environment. A law in Vietnam requires 51% of these enterprises' revenues to be reinvested in operations with social impact, said Mr Chitpong.
Mekong Quilts sells craft products ranging from traditional and lifestyle products to bamboo bicycles. It employs 340 women in Vietnam and Cambodia. Di Chung provides a ride-sharing platform while Koto offers training and jobs for marginalised youth through its restaurants and training centres.
Cambodia has 80 SEs and at least 260 revenue-generating non-profits. Most are in restaurants, crafts, agriculture, technology, microfinance and education.
"There is growing movement of SEs founded by international organisations or expatriates (in Cambodia)," Mr Chitpong noted.
Digital Divide Data, for example, is a multi-million-dollar SE that trains and develops local IT capacity for lower-income populations, while Hagar International focuses on destitute women, rehabilitation and skills for sustainable jobs. The latter runs six SEs from restaurants and cafes to catering services that provide training and employment.
Even in an advanced economy such as Malaysia, there is no legal definition for a "social enterprise", according to Sayaka Watanabe, the founder and CEO of re:terra, a Japan-based Asian social investment portal.
It is estimated that there are only about 100 SEs in Malaysia. Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the National Social Enterprises Blueprint in May 2015, allocating 20 million ringgit to MaGIC (Malaysian Global Innovation and Creative Centre) to raise SE numbers to 1,000 by 2018.
MaGIC was set up in 2013 to encourage entrepreneurial activities and build an ecosystem among key players. Under its terms, a social business only repays investors their original investment and reinvest 100% of its profit into the business. SEs can also pay their investors dividends from the profits they make.
GENDER ISSUES
Ms Watanabe of re:terra suspects that it is partly because working styles are changing, not only in Asia but globally, that SEs are becoming an option for women. Instead of being bound to a fixed schedule at a corporate employer, a woman running an SE can make time for her family while taking care of her business.
On the negative side, the growing number of SEs could simply indicate that women could not find suitable jobs, especially after having children. On the contrary, being SE means women have power, confidence and care about the community.
Whatever the case is, a lot of work still needs to be done, even in Japan, to support women's enterprises, said Ms Watanabe.
"I can see the improvement of course over the years but now it is still visible that women have yet to actively participate in business. They are not confident enough to participate in business or policymaking," she said. "I think Japan can learn from Thailand or Vietnam how we can create ecosystems to promote women's enterprises."
Six components -- policies, financial support, culture, marketing, human capital and markets -- are needed to create a supportive ecosystem for SEs, she said.
APSW secretary-general Maytinee Bhongsej said there are still gaps in all societies between women and men in terms of access and control of resources, resulting in different benefits from those resources. Also, power and status are quite different and that leads to unequal gender relations.
"And most of the time, we tend to be disadvantaged," Ms Maytinee said. "Prejudice and discrimination against women are still prevalent in all societies. The gender norms between men and women result in, for example, lack of the latter's access to education and social acceptance, lack of self-confidence in general and in holding leadership positions.
"In many countries including Japan, we found an unequal share of family household responsibilities, which mostly fall on women. Moreover, discriminatory property, matrimonial and inheritance laws and cultural practices are all barriers. Also, women have limited mobility."
Maytinee Bhongsej, secretary-general of the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women (APSW), says many gender-related obstacles still need to be overcome in the world of entrepreneurship.
For female-led SEs, the challenges are quite common across all countries. "Most of the time, women are not well recognised in mainstream economic development. In some countries, the concept of women entrepreneurs is still perceived as unusual," she said.
Gender issues in entrepreneurship include the fact that many women lack access to finance, including credit, mainly because they often did not own the means of production.
Female social entrepreneurs, said Ms Maytinee, have few peers and mentors who can inspire them to see what is possible and to create a business beyond the subsistence level, and of course, they lack of available marketing, economic and political networks.
"To get rid of barriers, we need to build the institutional capacity of organisations involved in social entrepreneurship to be more gender-sensitive and of course, we have to satisfy the needs of women's SEs by developing tools and support services for them to reach their full potential and enjoy equal status in society," she said.
Ms Watanabe agreed that financial support is just one factor behind a successful SE.
"Of course, money is important but they also need mentorship," she told Asia Focus, adding that there were very few successful SEs even in Japan, making it difficult to find mentors.
Networking is also important as a single SE cannot make its voice heard to lead changes in government policies. Training should also be tailored for women because "the way they were taught and the problems they faced are different" from male-run enterprises, she said.