Q: What inspired you to become a social venture entrepreneur?
A: Becoming a social venture entrepreneur was not my first dream, but I was always interested in marginalized people around me at a young age. I did about 300 hours of volunteer work in middle school, typed five books in Braille for the visually impaired, and participated in teaching volunteer activities at university. It was when I served as the president of the student council in high school and led activities such as selling bread made by people with disabilities to social enterprises, fair trade campaigns, and a flea market for workbooks that I realized how creating an opportunity leads people to participate and produce great results. This may be why I continued to be interested in this field.

Q: How did “NanumVitamin” begin?
A: I have participated in teaching volunteer activities in local libraries and children’s centers since I was in high school, and when you volunteer in such places, you meet many low-income students who find it difficult to go to private academies. The children would always buy food from convenience stores, especially when their parents both work and cannot take care of their children’s meals.
After COVID-19 broke out, I was unable to do any more volunteer work, so I created a YouTube channel called “Studio Sha.” I still clearly remember the moment I uploaded my first video. I witnessed how even when I talked about the same thing for an hour, YouTube allowed my story to be delivered to students living in rural regions, and the number of views rose to 30,000 and even 40,000. I learned that the impact may differ depending on which channel and system you use and that you can influence more people through such means. I wanted to create a system that can generate such a great impact like this.

One day, I remembered the children I met as a volunteer who had difficulty having meals. I then thought, ‘Perhaps a good education begins with a good meal. I want to solve this problem!’ and went on a mission to improve the marginalized children’s access to meals.

I began examining the current situation with this simple idea. I found that many good systems in place were not organically connected and were difficult to use. There are 310,000 children nationally who are underfed, and the annual government budget for children’s meal cards, which supports food expenses for underfed children, is 495 billion won. Moreover, other than the stores where children can use their meal cards, about 3,700 “positive influence stores” have declared that they will provide free meals to children with children’s meal cards. Not to mention that approximately 15% of the actual budget is unspent and restituted, and 85% is used in convenience stores. This made me wonder why the children have not been able to have different kinds of meals despite the large budget assigned to this issue.

One reason why children did not actively use the cards was psychological because they felt awkward or ashamed when they had to use the cards in person, but inaccurate information on the affiliated stores was also a problem. I thought that this problem could be resolved online. With this idea in mind, I participated in a National Public Data Utilization Start-up Contest and won the presidential prize. A national vote was involved in the process, and I was honored to receive much support from many people. It gave me the confidence and courage to make this idea a reality and start a new business.

So, I began building a team in January, and we started to work as a team in March. The company currently has seven staff members: two from the business team, including myself, and five from the development team. We now participate in the SK ESG Korea Project and are based at the Shinhan L Tower Building on Eulji-ro.

Q: “NanumVitamin” has achieved many things, but what are your most memorable moments?
A: The happiest moment was meeting the users of the “NanumVitamin” services in person. We first received donations through Tumblebug. As we searched for stores to execute this donation, we got in touch with the owner of a sushi restaurant in Gwanak-gu, who had always wanted to give away sushi to children in need. Then, we began a sponsorship project with the owner and met twenty children from an orphanage who visited the store and enjoyed the sushi so much. What was even more touching was that the store owner wanted only half of the donation out of goodwill and even used his share of the donation to buy gifts for the children. We held the event three times in May, June, and August, and it was a memorable experience feeding 60 children, especially because when you work online, you just presume that the children booked the restaurants and went there and cannot witness them eating in person. That was the first time we felt the magnitude of our actions, and it inspired us greatly.

Secondly, the most challenging moment came when we visited stores for sales. When we visited the stores, most of the people we met were part-time employees who were not the final decision-makers. So, we changed our strategy and decided to call the stores, and we could add four to five stores every hour. It was a highly successful sales rate, but with this speed, it was evident that it would take months to find 100 stores, which would make it highly challenging for us to scale up. That was why we changed our strategy again to sign agreements with large organizations where stores that are a right fit with NanumVitamin are members. We contacted the chairperson of the positive influence stores, and 3,000 existing stores were added to our service. We also signed an MOU with the Bongcheon Jeil Market. It was successful in retrospect, but the first time I made the calls, I realized that it would take ten failures to get four successes, so we just had to keep trying. I gained a stronger mentality in the process.

By making the calls, I learned so much about what functions the store owners would need and pondered on how NanumVitamin can also help the store owners. First of all, there is a fixed demand for meal cards. Children receive 8,000 won daily, which accounts for 240,000 won a month, but most of the children go to convenience stores because they do not know where to use the money. We are promoting the idea that if the stores offer a small discount, children can have meals in the stores and that the fixed demand will become fixed sales. We also designed the application so that stores with higher discounts would be ranked higher, and we also helped the stores with promotion through media exposure and signage on storefronts. We work with the principle that “Restaurant owners should be thriving to feed the children well!”

Q: What makes Naviyam different from other applications? What are its core strengths?
A: First of all, “Naviyam” tackles the problem of the information on stores that accept meal cards by using user input. Users can click the “Card Accepted/ Card Declined” buttons, so we are using that data to tackle this problem. Secondly, we aimed to solve the problem of children finding it difficult to say that they will use meal cards at meal card-accepting stores or positive influence stores by introducing the “booking service.” Children can confidently visit restaurants after making reservations, and restaurant owners can feel less burdened during busy hours. Thirdly, after realizing the children choose their meals based on the price of menus, we switched the list to a menu-based list instead of a store-based list. By taking these measures, we aim to enhance accessibility and convenience by saving the search cost.

Q: What are the must-dos for undergraduate students aspiring to launch their businesses?
A: Our team is in its early days, so I am not sure I am the right person to give advice, but if I must, I think it is helpful to think carefully about “why you have to launch this business.” Once you launch your own business, there is no going back. It takes a lot of courage to stop, and you need a clear vision to prevent yourself from feeling burnt out and continue to work on your business. In my case, I find myself thinking from the perspective of Navi whenever I eat or in every moment of my daily life. At this point, I believe it is essential to ask questions such as “Is it okay for my worldview to be this way?” While you can experience other things after launching your businesses, if necessary, I believe thinking about why you must do this should be a prerequisite. I also believe that my teammates are my first investors. My teammates are investing their precious time in our item and the team’s vision, so I feel that it is important that we have discussions and arrive at a vision that we can pursue together for a long time.

Q: What is your vision for the future?
A: To start with “NaVi”’s goals, we began as a company for underfed children, but we want to become a company that can improve accessibility and convenience for people who continue to have trouble finding meals. After seeing the number of mothers who registered on our platform, my goal became to expand our service to children of working parents who are too busy to tend to their children’s meals. Working parents account for half of all households, and the number is bound to increase. I hope we could be a social venture that moves towards a platform through which children can easily access meals.

The Entrepreneurship Center interviews current students and graduates of the Venture Management Program, as well as entrepreneurship teams that participated in the center’s programs, to introduce the stories of young entrepreneurs. If you are interested, please contact snustartup@snu.ac.kr.