Yilina Leong is a serial entrepreneur with a unique journey revolving around the F&B start-up scene. Yilina started her first business when she was a first year undergraduate and her second business in her penultimate year. After graduation, she entered the international news media industry for a while before joining the public sector, where she partnered local SMEs in the food and beverage industry to expand their businesses overseas. Currently, she is working on her latest venture, Fossa Chocolate.
Q: Could you share your previous role as a Manager at Enterprise Singapore?
Enterprise Singapore (ESG) is a government agency that helps Singapore companies to grow both locally and overseas. ESG was formed by the merger between SPRING and International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, and I used to be under IE Singapore before the merger. During my there, I partnered SMEs on their internationalisation journeys and brought many food companies to attend various trade shows abroad as well as on business missions to explore foreign market potential. This helped me get exposed to the international business environment.
Q: What does current your role in Fossa Chocolate entail?
My primary focus is to grow the business both locally and abroad, mainly through expansion of distribution networks and through forging meaningful partnerships to build brand awareness.
But like all start ups, we are a lean team and outside my primary role, I do all sorts of things from marketing, events, photography, logistics, hr, chocolate making…and so on.
Q: What do you think are the differences when working in the Private sector and the Public Sector?
In my opinion, the private sector has a stronger emphasis on revenue and profits as that ensures the sustainability of the company. Whereas for the public sector, the measures of success are slightly different as there is an additional role that the agency plays and in the case of ESG, that is to develop the business industries in Singapore and to uplift the capabilities of local SMEs which in turn impacts the economy.
Q: From your experience in working with home-grown companies in the F&B sector, what are the strengths of Singaporean enterprises and what are their weaknesses? Is there anything that prospective student entrepreneurs should take note of?
Singapore has a strong reputation for food safety and quality. This puts Singapore F&B brands in an advantaged position when venturing abroad as international consumers place a lot of trust in the “Singapore Brand”. Besides, Singapore also has multiple Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) inked, which is helpful in alleviating costs and smoothen the logistics whether we are importing raw materials or exporting finished goods.
Another advantage that we have is our exposure to the myriad of cuisines and cultures which I think helps F&B companies here to be more innovative, at least from the product perspective.
As for the disadvantages, I guess the flipside of maintaining a strong food safety and quality standard is that there are a lot more rules and regulations that Singapore companies have to adhere to, which make the start-up costs naturally higher for us. For example, there are many well known craft chocolate makers overseas who are distributing and exporting products manufactured from their backyard (yes their houses are huge!) or from small factories which are organised in a way to maximise usable space. For Singapore companies, there are stricter requirements in terms of the location of our food factories, the internal layouts and process flows, all of which will raise the financial and time investment required.
Q: What was the career that you were aspiring for when you first stepped out into the working world?
I graduated with a major in Marketing and minor Technopreneurship. Like most marketing graduates, I initially hoped to land a job in one of the large FMCG firms like Unilever and P&G. But when an opportunity came along for me to join CNN as part of their advertising sales team, I thought it would be a good experience as I was not familiar with the media and advertising industry at that point in time. So I took that up.
Q: How did your internship experiences or choice of specializations help in your entrepreneurial journey?
My NOC Singapore experience was one of my biggest takeaways from NUS – from interning at a local start up as a marketing/ business development executive, to joining the Lean Startup Machine together with international entrepreneurs and being immersed in the Start Up Chile scene. These experiences and exposure led me to start out my entrepreneurial journey early, with my first venture in year 1 and second in year 3.
Being in NOC fuelled my passion in growing businesses, while my various internship experiences and specialisations helped equip me with useful skills to fulfil this passion.
Q: We are aware that the current business and economic environments are dynamic. Technology has changed the business world in big ways. What are your opinions on the impacts that such disruptive trends have on businesses (MNCs vs SMEs)?
Technology has impacted businesses in many ways. For example, e-commerce has shaped how companies sell their products whereas automation has affected how companies produce. I think that the introduction of technology is almost always beneficial in the long run. The challenge however, lies in integrating new technology with existing systems, as well as the constant need to evolve the business so as to keep up with technological trends.
In general, MNCs tend to be the early adopters of technology, whereas SMEs may be more resistant in adopting new technologies due to limited financial and manpower resources.
Q: While most businesses are working on transformational changes to cope with the changing environment and to stay relevant, what are the key skill sets and mindset that one needs to have in order to be of value to his employer?
In my opinion, the willingness to try anything and everything is very important. In other words, the “Can-Do” attitude.
Being resourceful and good at solving problems are also very valuable traits. In all jobs, there will always be occasions where you’re faced with issues to resolve. Being resourceful means that you can adapt quickly to your environment and move forward, by asking the right people the right questions, and acting on them to resolve the issues.
Q: Given the recent push for entrepreneurship in the 3 major universities in Singapore, what is your opinion of the age-old notion that “you do not need a degree to be an Entrepreneur”?
I think that going for a business degree is useful for gaining a head start in learning the different aspects of running a business, though this is not absolutely necessary as many concepts can also be learned through self reading or on the job.
Beyond textbook theories, I think what’s more valuable in pursuing a business degree is the hands-on experiences through projects, and being immersed in an environment of like-minded individuals/ potential entrepreneurs. You never know, you could become business partners with your lecture hall neighbour 5-10 years down the road.
Q: What do you think are the strengths of home-grown entrepreneurs? There is a notion that Singapore is a very sheltered business environment and home-grown entrepreneurs may not have the sharp senses to do business in more competitive landscapes overseas.
While the general seems to be that Singapore businesspeople tend to be more rule abiding and may be disadvantaged in competing with more shrewd or aggressive foreign business owners, we still see many successful home-grown brands that have made their mark beyond the shores of Singapore.
I feel that a strength of Singapore companies is our general trustworthiness and honest approach in doing business, as this helps to foster long term relationships with our local and foreign business partners. Most companies we have worked with value long-term partnerships, and trust is very important when doing business together.
Q: Any regrets (in your studies or career progression) / anything you would have done differently?
Whenever I embark on a new journey, I challenge myself to find a takeaway that will value-add to my future. I am generally more forward looking in making the most out of the path I choose, so I don’t have regrets on my choices of studies or career journey.
Q: Is there any advice that you would want to share to individuals who are keen to start their own business or keen to pursue entrepreneurship?
There are many great business ideas out there but every year, there are as many companies winding down as there are starting up. Beyond the idea, execution is crucial in making a business successful.
I think it is important to be passionate about your business because you’ll need that motivation to tide you through the tough days ahead. But I would caution against blindly following your passion when it comes to entrepreneurship because not all ideas that grow out of passion make sustainable business models. It is essential to evaluate the idea’s potential with facts and figures and differentiate between a passion that you can grow into a business versus one that should remain as a hobby.