Business not just about making money, says Hong Kong social venture group

Francis Ngai Wah-sing envisages an entire change in the mindset of corporations, where profit will no longer be the deciding factor for business success

Ngai, 43, is founder and chief executive of Social Ventures Hong Kong. He was a senior strategist for PCCW before deciding to set up an organisation that launches projects in various sectors of the community - then helps to turn them into profit-making social ventures.

"I enjoy business as a game", says Ngai. "We have this presumption that government will be superman…but the household income hasn't risen [over the past few years]."

Nor have benefits trickled down from businesses to other parts of the community, or from our city's billionaires.

Established in 2007, Social Ventures Hong Kong is a philanthropic organisation aiming to provide financial and non-financial support to social purpose groups and social enterprises in the city. It's being nominated in the Lion Rock Entrepreneur Award category of this year's Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, organised by the South China Morning Post.

Corporations need to go further than the current corporate social responsibility model, Ngai says, and adopt shared values as part of their business success. "It's about how to create impact in that last quarter," he says. He wants to bring about a change in mindset so that profit is not the only measure of success.