As the world focuses on sustainable development, NUS Business School’s alumnus Li Ruiwu (Executive MBA (Chinese) programme Intake 21) feels that we should also create liveable indoor spaces. He co-founded co-working space O2WORK and SINGRASS Indoor Smart Eco Farm to bring more greenery into offices, elevating people’s physical and mental health through innovative ways.
Q: What inspired you to start a company that builds indoor smart farms?
In 2019, my two co-founders and I started the company O2WORK in Singapore, using plant communities to create a “green, natural, oxygen-rich, and liveable” co-working office space. We were at the forefront of the green sharing economy.
However, we realised that although indoor plants create an ecological landscape, the sheer number of flower pots greatly reduces visual aesthetics. For some people, it even leads to trypophobia (an aversion to seeing irregular patterns or bumps).
In late 2019, my team and I began studying hydroponics for growing leafy vegetables, which will replace the flowerpots. Hydroponics is also one way of ensuring the “survival, growth, and biomass” of plants in an indoor environment. This is a tricky question worldwide.
Later, the Singapore government announced its “30 by 30” goal for local agricultural products to meet 30 per cent of the people’s nutritional needs by 2030. We felt very happy because our hydroponic system could contribute to that vision. In addition, leafy vegetables, with a larger surface area for photosynthesis, can better purify the air than green potted plants.
SINGRASS advocates growing vegetables for consumption and not for sale. We want to build a shared ecological farm around those who eat vegetables, creating a new ecology for urban farming. Leafy vegetables which thrive in lower temperatures can make full use of indoor air-conditioning and high carbon dioxide concentration.
The conventional way of getting vegetables from farm to table entails packaging, transportation and refrigeration, which incur electricity, petrol and other costs. Growing vegetables indoors will help to reduce some of these costs. The maximum monthly output of our single unit can reach up to 10 kg.
Indoor farms make the process of growing vegetables more sustainable.
Q: What were some challenges, and how did you overcome them?
In 2016, I began to work on nature restoration projects, but I had little relevant professional knowledge and experience, and could only learn from scratch. I purchased books such as “Botany”, “Soil Science”, “Ecology”, “Ecological Restoration of Mining Areas”, as well as “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit” by Dr Adelle Davis, an American expert on nutrition. I read on MRT trains, buses, planes and at the airport. For more than six years, I have been learning and practising. When I couldn’t remember the facts after a few attempts, I used the primitive method of jotting down the key content.
The development of the hydroponic system was a serial testing of the combination of various growth conditions. Each test spanned at least a full growth cycle (about three to five weeks). Over three years, we put in a lot of time, effort and money. The market had not shown sufficient positive feedback, and we felt lost and hesitant. What sustained us was our mission of “making the indoor environment more ecological, for a healthier body and mind”. We have filed 11 patents for the new indoor smart ecological farm we developed, of which four have been approved.
Q: How will indoor farms make the modern workplace different?
Scientists have long proven that plants are the most ecological solution to indoor air pollution. Still, for a long time, we cannot ensure that plants survive and grow sufficiently in the indoor environment. They were used just as decoration, a form of visual aesthetics.
Indoor smart ecological farms solve the abovementioned issues. By controlling the growth conditions, leafy vegetables can thrive. Even in small offices, we can create interior spaces that are thick in greenery.
Indoor planting systems add a sustainable touch of green to offices.
Q: How has NUS Business School shaped your business philosophy?
The school’s Executive MBA (Chinese) programme has turned 25. This programme is not only the first EMBA (Chinese) programme in the world but also an ideal blend of Eastern and Western cultures, theory and practice. During the two-year study, the alumni company visits led me to enter the ecological restoration industry.
The erudition of the professors and classmates’ debates made me think deeply about the co-working space industry, the energy consumption and costs of traditional agriculture, the growth of leafy vegetables with low costs and energy usage, and actions for a circular economy.
SINGRASS is my second venture, and I have always believed that a business exists to create value for customers and not to make profits. How can we create value for customers? First of all, we need to find the customers’ pain points and needs, and at the same time, become subject matter experts. If you cannot gain expertise, providing professional services or creating value for your customers is impossible.
Q: What are your views on the past, present and future of sustainable development?
Since industrialisation, the natural environment that humans depend on for their survival has been destroyed at an accelerated rate. To this end, major countries worldwide have begun to unite in addressing climate change and focusing on sustainable development.
In my opinion, humans survival and their physical and mental health lie at the core of green sustainable development. The natural and indoor environments form the basis for survival and good health. We should first address environmental health and not just rely on various health supplements and medicine to stay healthy.
Urbanisation keeps humans away from the natural environment and creates more enclosed spaces for work and activities. This is common in cities, where white-collar workers are often confined in high-rise buildings. Some materials are excessively used to pursue visual aesthetics, leading to indoor environmental pollution which cannot be ignored.
In the future, while people focus on protecting and restoring the natural environment, they must also pay attention to the indoor environment, especially those with no windows. As indoor environment stewards, my professional team and I aim to create more “green, natural, oxygen-rich, and liveable” indoor spaces. We also wish to partner experts from our alma mater to achieve our vision of “buildings that are green both externally and internally, and co-sharing green, liveable indoor spaces”.
