One of the important trends and driving forces of contemporary globalization is precisely the global flow of labor. In Hong Kong, domestic helpers from the Philippines are a living example of the international population movement. They have been playing an essential role in different families for over 30 years. Many families can devote themselves to work without any worries and promote Hong Kong’s economic benefits. With the aging of the population, the demand for foreign helpers in Hong Kong derived from the past 30 years is expected to reach more than 600,000 people, accounting for one-sixth of the total labor force in Hong Kong. There are more than 2 million foreign Filipino workers in other developed countries. However, these foreign workers are often neglected in terms of legal sta...[ Read more ]

One of the important trends and driving forces of contemporary globalization is precisely the global flow of labor. In Hong Kong, domestic helpers from the Philippines are a living example of the international population movement. They have been playing an essential role in different families for over 30 years. Many families can devote themselves to work without any worries and promote Hong Kong’s economic benefits. With the aging of the population, the demand for foreign helpers in Hong Kong derived from the past 30 years is expected to reach more than 600,000 people, accounting for one-sixth of the total labor force in Hong Kong. There are more than 2 million foreign Filipino workers in other developed countries. However, these foreign workers are often neglected in terms of legal status, social response, labor and economic situation, etc. They also endure mental pain for a long time because of the financial burden of their families.

It is known that the Hong Kong government has in recent years devoted great efforts to advancing the development of innovation and technology. By joining the TLE program, I started to realise that it is important to build something not only innovative and technology-driven, but also with social value. Over the past years, to empower those foreign workers in Hong Kong and other places, I have been building MamaHelpers and OneCircle to help them overcome financial difficulties and achieve their goals and dreams.

The purpose of the study was to acquire the business academic knowledge from school and experience how to build a venture from zero to one in real life. Throughout the several years of research journey, I learnt how to measure the successes and failures of business, how to evaluate the potential customer and market niche, and to identify and solve problems when they occur. My particular targeted customer is initially Filipino domestic workers (OFW) in Hong Kong. I examine what difficulty they encountered, what help they needed when they were working abroad and how they managed their finances. As I made some findings from the analysis, I built two different ventures catering their needs. My first startup MamaHelpers disrupted the traditional employment industry in Hong Kong, enabling workers to find their employers easily in Hong Kong or from overseas. My second startup, OneCircle, aims to educate OFWs to manage their finances wisely.

In order to deliver the product and make the startup successful, it took several months to investigate our targeted customers’ interest and needs. Given the length of our survey and experimental sessions, ranging from market research and go-to-market launch campaigns, to tech product development and fundraising, my startup teammates and I experienced different hardships and failures. One of the biggest challenges we faced was the lack of experience in building a completely new business from scratch. My teammates and I had to self-learn different skills including tech product development, marketing and internal operational management skills. In later stages, we countered internal co-founding team conflicts, which led us to the fatal failures after all of the successful experimental startup journey. More discussions and self-reflections on the startup failures and stage of success will be discussed.

In addition, after the failures of MamaHelpers will be analyzed, it leads me to new motivation to kick start another new startup OneCircle. More discussions on the business ideas and market positioning will be shared. The planned project timeline and deliverables will be summarised. This is another business development journey throughout my study program.

MamaHelpers used to be a fast-growing and leading helper-matching network in Hong Kong and worldwide. It is built to help those foreign domestic helpers get a job quickly and efficiently using a much more transparent network.

OneCircle is being built after MamaHelpers’ company dissolution. It positions itself to be the leading finance technology platform for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), committed to providing world-class financial products and services for those un-banked. I aim to improve the quality of life of OFW by presenting a complete and reliable all-round financial ecosystem. OneCircle’s mission is to enable greater financial literacy, financial control, and offer products and services that are better and cheaper.

Despite the vicissitude of this startup journey, I remain diligent and persistent in building something meaningful to serve those minorities in our society. In this journey, I also continuously build my network with an experienced team of industry veterans. OneCircle places us in a favourable position to achieve our goals of being the leader in finance technology and credit reference for the OFW market.