Educating youths on financial management

SHAVON Hon has come a long way since winning first place at the Think Big Ignite Business Plan Award competition earlier this year.

Her winning business plan, an online financial learning programme, is currently in development under her start-up BruInnovEdu and is expected to enter beta-testing stage soon.

Hon hopes to teach students all around the world on the importance of money management before they reach the age of 18 with her project, an idea she conceived last year during her time as an accountant.

The programme is expected to be incorporated in schools nationwide, where teachers and students can engage in an interactive financial education through the programme's intuitive trivias, activities and quizzes.

The Brunei Times had the opportunity to speak with the entrepreneur, who shared her life-changing experience from being a business plan competition participant to a an incubatee at the iCentre.

What motivated you to create this financial learning programme?

I want to teach kids how to manage their money before they're 18. I believe that the spending patterns are being set when you're growing up, and once you've grown up already, it's quite difficult for you to change your habits and your mindset about personal finance.

His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam also mentioned that in his recent titah that spending beyond ones means can lead to tragic outcome. I believe the leaders who are more strategic at looking at these things realize the importance, but the issue here is how do we actually convey it to the young people. The educators need to be aware of this.

This programme basically teaches about money, but its actually more than that. I want to teach the kids that a lot of things in this world are limited, a lot of natural resources are limited; food, clean water, very basic stuff that we take for granted. And the reason why we get rising food and oil prices is because there is high demand but low supply.

How much of an impact has support from the iCentre and the BEDB made on your start-up after winning at Think Big Ignite competition earlier this year?

I think the Think Big Ignite was the one that has made the big difference for me. My husband has quit his job in order to help with the business full-time. We are now an incubatee at the iCentre with an office here as well as a bigger team.

The BEDB had given us a lot of exposure in terms of making the connection with the community. They have invited us to roadshows and exhibitions to showcase our product.

We also just recently received the LEAP grant from the BEDB, and that's the biggest contribution. I really think that it's not just about the money we are getting, but its the fact that the BEDB really believe in us that they give us the funds, that is really a great confidence boost for us. I believe that BEDB's support helps to build our reputation and our credibility.

Your startup has made quite some progress since winning the award. What is next?

Seriously, we are not very big yet. We capitalise on getting interns from UBD and ITB to work with us, in addition to the full-time local staff that we have hired. Last month we had about seven interns from UBD to help us in developing this project.

The reason why I want the interns to be in is because I want to let them experience what its like to work in a startup. I also wanted to get some fresh ideas from them. They don't come from ICT background. They are from public policy, so they were helping me on marketing.

I have given them a lot of opportunities and exposure like presenting the project to the judges at the Brunei ICT Awards (BICTA) and also the AITI ANIMASI Challenge, and I have helped them to understand how to promote a company at a professional level. I don't think many companies gave those kind of exposure to their interns.

Most of the interns I hire are females. I think traditionally in the ICT industry, the men often plays a bigger role. With a little bit of my effort, I want to turn that around because I don't want this to be a male dominated arena, and I want to give women equal opportunities in this field. I think it worked out really well.

What are the challenges that you face as a startup?

Financing is a huge challenge. We're a start-up and so we have not made any revenues yet. I'll be working on my project for at least a few more months before I can actually see revenue coming in, so the cashflow is very crucial at this point.

I'm an accountant by practice and I never realise it to be this crucial, that if we don't manage our finances properly, we could run out of cash before the product is even completed. That's something that I've been spending a lot of time on; planning and budgeting for the business, managing my cashflow, paying my employees, and so on.

The Brunei Times