Boldly starting a business to pursue a dream

25 Mar 2021

Lianhe Zaobao, 25 Mar 2021, 大胆创业筑梦 (translation)
 
In 2015, she assisted an education start-up company to plan courses and lectures, in 2017, she tried to develop a portable drum instrument and created a music start-up company. 25-year-old Pek Yun Ning (right) has accumulated different entrepreneurial experience at a young age, and she is now also running a high-tech urban agricultural business to help solve climate change issues.
 
She firmly believes in having an open attitude towards life, to be bold enough to try, and to be passionate about the path one chooses.
 
Pek Yun Ning graduated from the Singapore University of Technology and Design's (SUTD) through train SUTD Technology Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP) in 2019, majoring in Engineering Systems and Design with a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree. Faced with boring schoolwork, she dreamed of running her own business in her first year of university.
 
She believes that she has some talent in entrepreneurship. In addition to being a curious and adventurous person, she always pays close attention to discovering new ideas. She also possesses three entrepreneurial qualities: the ability to make quick judgments and decisions, the ability to effectively formulate strategies, and a fondness for communicating and sharing ideas with others.
 
“We develop products or services that can improve people's lives. When consumers are willing to spend money to buy, it means that the product or service is useful, and the profits earned can also be used to develop more and more useful products, which is a kind of virtuous cycle.”
 
Last April, Pek Yun Ning and her American partner established a company with the aim of using advanced technology to improve the productivity of urban agriculture and make better use of limited resources such as space. For example, using applications to determine and control the moisture, fertilizer, temperature and water required by crops, or by installing an augmented reality program on the mobile phone that scan the plants and immediately assess its state, etc.
 
The company signed a five-year agreement with the Institute of Technical Education in early February, with the hopes of educating and training the next generation on sustainable agricultural methods.
 
“The projects that promote sustainability in our country are generally not large in scale. In terms of urban agriculture, few local farmers will actually consider the overall situation and think that they can enhance our country's food security.”