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It’s never too late to learn or make mistakes, say two Singapore Polytechnic graduates

SINGAPORE — Entrepreneur Lee Zheng De may have just graduated from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) on Wednesday (May 2), but the 21-year-old already has a start-up called Packdat under his belt.

Lee Zheng De (left), 21, and Dominic Li Guoming (right), 33. The duo are part of Singapore Polytechnic’s graduating cohort.

Lee Zheng De (left), 21, and Dominic Li Guoming (right), 33. The duo are part of Singapore Polytechnic’s graduating cohort.

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SINGAPORE — Entrepreneur Lee Zheng De may have just graduated from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) on Wednesday (May 2), but the 21-year-old already has a start-up called Packdat under his belt.

The online travel planner, which helps users to arrange their travel itineraries through recommending routes and timings, has seen over 5,000 itineraries created for 16 cities across Asia.

The start-up, which was awarded the Top 3 Millennial Traveller Award by CNBC and Accenture, gained a new partner recently, with Indonesian digital travel company Passpod investing an undisclosed sum.

Mr Lee, who founded Packdat with his older brother Zheng Dao, after several failed business ventures was cited by Deputy Prime Minister and coordinating minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean as an example of the type of entrepreneur with global outlook the Republic needs.

Speaking at SP's 58th graduation ceremony on Wednesday, Mr Teo stressed that given "increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous" environment that Singaporeans have to operate in, constantly disrupted by rapid technological breakthroughs, the Republic's workforce needs two important attributes for the future – a spirit of lifelong learning and entrepreneurship.

While Singapore has successfully achieved mass primary education, secondary and tertiary education, it still needs to overcome the frontier to "to find the right model for mass continuing education", the DPM said.

Giving the analogy of the education system as one that provides ladders and bridges for people to progress, Mr Teo said people cannot just rely on them "get to the next level … (where) … by definition, you can only go where many other people have gone before".

To go beyond, people would need to "learn how to cut (their) own path … learn to take risks and be prepared to learn both from success and failure", said Mr Teo.

Mr Lee, who graduated with a diploma in engineering with business, was the polytechnic's 200,000th graduate, and certainly someone who knew how to deal with failures.

Before Packdat, he experimented with several business ideas, including an e-payment wallet, an online marketplace for students to exchange textbooks, and a e-commerce site for shoppers to team up to purchase groceries in bulk and hence enjoy discounts.

The e-commerce site soon fizzled out, until he and his brother, also an SP graduate, started Tripcendo in 2016. Similar to Airbnb's Trips, their venture connects travellers with local hosts for curated travel experiences, in countries such as New Delhi and Manila and Singapore, via an online community.

Despite having a ready supply of over 200 hosts in Singapore, it was still tough to ramp up the demand, especially from international travellers.

Undeterred by the setback, the Lee brothers went back to the drawing board, calling up previous users of Tripcendo for their feedback. During this process, they stumbled upon a common problem users flagged – a challenge putting together their travel itinerary from the various online sources they visit to plan their trips. Last June, they revamped Tripcendo, and Packdat was born.

Citing Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs as his role model, Mr Lee, whose father runs a small bakery, said, "(While) there is luck involved, you have also need to work really hard and have patience to see through."

Besides having the passion, it is also about being practical and finding a strong niche to solve that problem, said Mr Lee, who plans to head to Silicon Valley later this month to "hustle" with other creatives and entrepreneurs to learn how they run their companies.

Embodying the spirit of life-long learning that DPM Teo spoke about, another SP graduand Dominic Li, 33, did not let age stop him from pursuing his goals.

With a turbulent family background, where his mother left the family at age four and he had to shuttle between staying with different family members, Mr Li did not fare well in primary school. Even though he managed to make it to Pioneer Junior College, he was asked to leave after failing his first-year, after he spent too much time in his band co-curricular activity.

So during National Service, he signed on as an army regular at the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), and was offered the SAF Military Domain Experts Scheme Study Award to upgrade his skills and knowledge after eight years. He enrolled in SP for a diploma in energy systems and management at SP.

Despite being 10 years older than his peers and often mistaken for being a lecturer at first, he challenged himself to be more pro-active by seeking out leadership positions, mixing around with different peers for group projects, and helping his classmates in weaker modules.

Mr Li, who received the Lee Kuan Yew Award on Wednesday for being among the top eight graduates at SP, counts being part of the team which built a full-sized working solar car for the World Solar Challenge 2017 – a 3,000km race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia – as one of his SP highlights.

Mr Li said he valued the international exposure to speak to foreign competitors from renowned universities from different countries like Germany, who willingly shared tips on how they built their cars to travel faster and more efficiently.

He plans to use the knowledge gained at SP back at work at the SAF as an assistant analyst, to help them with building more efficient systems.

Acknowledging that though he has taken a longer "detour" compared to people his age, Mr Li said he was grateful for the second chance, and tries to inspire and guide his classmates.

Helping students become entrepreneurs

To foster an entrepreneurial mindset in its students, SP set up an entrepreneurship centre called Spinoff last year, where students come up with a business model, a business plan, and learn marketing and branding and financial strategies in a hands-on elective module.

To date, close to 100 students have enrolled in the module, with four projects already being incubated in the centre – spanning food and beverage, fintech, real estate and speech therapy technology solutions.

Later this year, a new Continuing Education and Training (CET) course will be launched for aspiring entrepreneurs in Singapore and will be open to students and adult learners.

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