Hong Kong social enterprises on an upward trajectory

Social enterprises (SEs) are seen as an innovative way of tackling various issues which concern the community by setting up new businesses which usually operate on a not-for-profit basis. For nearly a decade, various stakeholders have been actively developing this concept in Hong Kong and to date the city probably has the highest number of social enterprises per capita in Asia. But what remains unclear is how many of the entrepreneurs behind these initiatives are able to maintain the early enthusiasm and momentum and how many of these enterprises have been turned into a self-supporting venture.

“Hong Kong’s social entrepreneurship is quite advanced in terms of numbers and marketing, compared with neighbouring economies in Asia,” says Kee Chi-hing, adjunct associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and a member of the Home Affairs Bureau’s Social Enterprise Advisory Committee.

To back this up, Kee notes that, with around 450 SEs and a population of just over 7 million, Hong Kong is ostensibly doing better than Singapore which has roughly 170 SEs for a population of 5.4 million.

However, according to a survey by the DBS Social Enterprise Advancement Grant 2014, only 35 per cent of such businesses are making a profit, while 32.5 per cent achieve breakeven and the remaining 32.5 per cent operate at a loss. These findings are in line with other research done last year by the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). It showed that 62 per cent of the 174 local SEs surveyed were profitable or at breakeven in 2012.

Diamond Cab, a Hong Kong start-up providing point-to-point transportation for wheelchair users, is one of those social enterprises that was able to break even within a year of starting operations in 2011.