{"id":9045,"date":"2023-01-01T10:40:52","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T02:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/?p=9045"},"modified":"2025-07-29T10:41:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T02:41:46","slug":"savouring-the-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2023\/01\/01\/savouring-the-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Savouring the Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Food insecurity was an issue that then-NUS Business School Year 3 student Ms Katrina Lee\u00a0witnessed first-hand when she volunteered with community service clubs to distribute food rations to low-income households in Singapore. During such sessions, Ms Lee noticed recipients did not want commonly-donated\u00a0items such as canned soup and instant noodles, as these were staples which most of them already had.\u00a0\u00a0

While working part-time in the F&B industry, Ms Lee also observed how restaurateurs threw away perfectly edible food by the bulk at the end of the day \u2013 it being more convenient to dispose than to resell or donate them. She also saw how water insecurity and water pollution directly affected the local community when she worked at an international consulting agency, The Water Agency in Myanmar, during a summer internship.
These experiences inspired her to co-found tech social enterprise Savour! to tackle food waste and food insecurity in Singapore \u2013 a topic that has grown in salience with the advent of COVID-19. Officially launched in August 2020, this one-stop business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce marketplace website and app platform seeks to connect companies such as retailers and importers to other companies and non-profit organisations to procure regular, expiring, blemished and surplus food at corporate discounts, as well as in-kind sponsorships for their operations, programmes and events.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ms Lee (third from left) with her Savour! teammates and judges from The OCBC Green Pitch 2019.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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FROM DREAM TO REALITY<\/strong><\/p>

The journey to the company\u2019s launch was\u00a0not an easy one. Ms Lee had first come up with the idea a year earlier, when she was a member of student group Enactus NUS (now called NUS Social Impact Catalyst), pitching it to other members in the student group to join her core team. To gain customers, she started out by cold-calling potential customers and merchants. A breakthrough came when she and her team won The OCBC Green Pitch 2019 for Savour!. This helped to secure funding to develop the platform, acquire customers and manage operations.<\/p>

Ms Lee shares that during her first month of trying to do so, she sent out 100 emails to potential merchants and received only one reply. \u201cMost were small-to-medium-sized enterprises that had not heard about sustainability,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe challenge was to convince them of the benefits of reducing food waste through the platform \u2014 they would be able to recoup costs, clear inventory and generate positive publicity.\u201d She used various channels to reach out to them\u00a0and even visited the stores. \u201cI then tried different ways of pitching to them to see what worked best,\u201d she adds.<\/p>

Ms Lee\u2019s persistence has paid off. To date, Savour! counts about 140 merchants and B2B customers on its platform, including brands and non-profit organisations such as Gong Cha, Grain, Beyond Social Services and The Salvation Army, as well as student groups such as NUS Students\u2019 Community Service Club and NUS Students\u2019 Business Club. Her team has also since grown to 10, with other NUS students, Ms Jessie Chia and Ms Zatalyn Ho, joining the startup to work on marketing and business development. The platform has even expanded its offerings to include corporate gifts, office supplies and event rental services.
Ms Lee credits the rigour of a NUS Business education for equipping her in her startup journey. \u201cThe courses that I took, confidence gained from the active class participation, and high expectations of presentation skills and content set by my professors trained me to deliver compelling pitch decks confidently to engage my stakeholders and encourage buy-ins,\u201d she says. These have also served her well in her role as Savour!\u2019s CEO, where she oversees marketing, business development and finance within the company.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Savour! platform on laptop and phone. Savour! was officially launched in August 2020 after a year of groundwork done by Ms Lee and her team.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Ms Lee (third from left, second row) with her peers at the NUS Entrepreneurship Startathon module.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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If you have an idea, just do it. You don\u2019t have to have a complete idea or team to start digging into the issues and working through possible solutions. Don\u2019t be afraid of rejections and embarrassing yourself.\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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HELPING ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS<\/strong><\/p>

Even while a student, Ms Lee found time to pursue her twin passions of fostering entrepreneurship and giving back. She even took time out to co-found NUS Angel Ventures \u2013 a student group that connects NUS alumni who are angel investors and mentors with startups by NUS students and graduates. The inspiration to do so came after meeting many student entrepreneurs at NUS Entrepreneurship Startathon (a NUS Design-Your-Own-Module entrepreneurship module).\u00a0

\u201cI got to know many student startup founders there who had ideas with traction and potential and just needed the funding to execute them,\u201d she shares. \u201cI was fortunate enough to secure funding for Savour!, but there are many students who face challenges with this. I want to help, and I see this as my way of giving back to the NUS community both in the short and long term.\u201d

Ms Lee \u2014 who caught the startup bug during her polytechnic days, when she ran a business as part of an entrepreneurship project \u2014 was certain then that she wanted to found a startup that is not only financially sustainable but one that also makes a positive community impact. Her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? \u201cIf you have an idea, just do it. You don\u2019t have to have a complete idea or team to start digging into the issues and working through possible solutions,\u201d she says. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid of rejections and embarrassing yourself. If you put yourself out there and take the initiative to speak with your customers as well as mentors, people will be more than happy to take time out to give you advice, and link you up with the relevant connections and resources. Entrepreneurship is not a smooth-sailing journey, but I can say it is a meaningful and fulfilling one.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ms Katrina Lee (Business \u201921) is the co-founder and CEO of a startup that aims to fight food waste in Singapore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-startups"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9045"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9078,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045\/revisions\/9078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}