I empowered 20,000 users and 500 businesses to prevent 50,000 kgs of carbon emission in 2 years

In one line, what do you do and what is your most significant achievement?

I empowered 20,000 users and 500 businesses to prevent 50,000 kgs of carbon emission in 2 years.

Who are you and what business did you start?

I love solving problems by creating simple yet effective solutions. Few years back, I experienced how food waste is such a big problem and I decided to solve it. I Co Founded Just Dabao - a social impact company that prevents avoidable carbon emissions by redistributing surplus food in time.

When businesses like bakeries, cafes, and supermarkets have too much food, they list it on our platform. Usually, the excess food could be due to weather conditions lowering the demand, wrong estimation of demand or imperfect appearance.

People browse our app, to buy the food they like at a great price, take it home and enjoy. It gives every individual a chance to directly and positively impact the planet without sacrificing their lifestyle.

What's your backstory?

It was a funny story to begin with. In 2018, during my MBA, I used to camp at the college cafe to study. Studying was only part of the reason…the other reason was that I got a free pizza at their closing hour. I was so proud of myself for finding this interesting hack.

Eventually, I also saw that the cafe had to throw away a lot of perfectly edible food even though they didn't like to do that. They didn't have an option.

Fast forward to 2020, during the peak of covid one of my friends had to close her shop in SG and move back to her home country. She was very passionate about baking, and she even graduated from a baking course all the way in Paris.

It was devastating and I wanted to do something about it. I connected the dots, talked to industry experts and surveyed the people here. That's how Just Dabao came about.

We started off to help F&B businesses during tough times and along the way we have realised we can help solve a much bigger & global problem - food waste.

What should be the first steps to take to enter your industry?

As with any business, the most important first step is the product market fit. Finding the product market fit is not easy and it takes several iterations. However, at every roadblock there is a hidden opportunity or a workaround. Once you figure it out, try another iteration and see if it makes sense. Resilience is key here!

How did you spend your First 100 Days of launching your business?

We spent it on finding the product market fit. We surveyed consumers, interviewed food business owners and conducted focus groups to figure out the potential. Once we were satisfied with the results, the next step was to test it.

We created a community on facebook and started growing it. We wanted to see if we are able to get a sizable audience. Meanwhile, we were working on onboarding F&B stores (which was a daunting task at first). Once we got our first merchant, we shared their surplus on our facebook page and got a few orders! This was a good enough test that proved there was indeed value for our stakeholders. All this process was quite manual.

So the next logical step was to create the technology to automate the order processing. After a failed attempt with a freelance developer, we decided to use Shopify (a no-code tool) to build a simple marketplace. This was a very good decision as it kept our costs low and made testing of new ideas easy.

Simultaneously, we were also reaching out to the F&B stores. It took 2 months and multiple rejections to perfect our pitch and understand their needs. Once we figured it out, it was easy to onboard the next 100.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain partnerships/customers?

From a customer standpoint, it was the quality that we maintained from the start. We ensured that all the food that we provided is tasty and well portioned. Meanwhile, for the F&B merchants it's an easy way to clear off their excess stock and make room for new ones.

What has taken you from 0 to 100?

Resilience, shared vision and a bit of timing!

Resilience to keep pushing with merchant onboarding despite rejections and finding workarounds for technology despite the first failed attempt.

Shared vision of food bloggers, influencers and media editors who surfaced our cause of reducing food waste and helping F&B stores clear surplus. They promoted us out of good will and a shared vision to make an impact.

Timing of the rise of a sustainable living approach. The government, businesses and people are more focussed than ever on sustainability and reducing food waste is one of their key priorities.

What is one underrated thing in your industry that business owners should start doing/using?

Use data to find the driver of growth. It's often overlooked but once you find the main driver, you can focus all your efforts into it.

What was one failure you had to go through that others in your industry should look out for?

Hiring too fast before finding the key driver of growth!

Once you get funded, resist the temptation to hire quickly. Usually, the assumption would be to hire resources in multiple areas and this would help faster growth. However, it doesn't work that way.

Instead, test your hypothesis in simple low cost ways. Find one or two key growth drivers and completely focus on those. Hire in these areas. Repeat this when you feel the growth drivers have shifted.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We use Hubspot for marketing purposes such as reaching out to prospective clients, email marketing as well as their analytical tools. Trello is used for organising my team's tasks and projects, along with Google Calendar to schedule focused meetings.The marketing team uses Canva for designing our Social Media Content.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Today, over 550 F&B businesses in Singapore have joined forces with Just Dabao to reduce their carbon emissions. These include both small and big brands such as SaladStop!, Maison Kayser, Marche Mövenpick, Cassia Caneles and so many more. All together, we have prevented over 50,000 Kgs of carbon emissions by empowering a 30,000+ community on Telegram, Instagram, website and other channels.

For our future plans, we are super excited as we have recently launched our pilot on fruits and vegetables at great prices delivered to your home for free. We have seen a tremendous response from the community on this pilot where we have seen a 400% increase in orders after the launch. We will be expanding to multiple neighbourhoods in the coming months.