SOCIAL IMPACT ACCELERATION

A. Social Business Description

A1. Social mantra one-liner

“Preserve thế legacy of HY longan, Cultivate a sustainable future”

We are GenZ generation and we are the main force conducting this project with the expectation of preserving the unique longan variety of Hung Yen, promoting sustainable agriculture, and protecting the health of the community and environment with the aim of popularizing our Vietnamese agriculture products around the world.

A2. Social impact clarity and significance

We are continuously defining the root causes in the clearest ways by being motivated to comply with the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals presented below:

SDGs 3: Good health and well-being

Currently, the situation of food poisoning has gradually increased and has been alerted by the government due to the lack of product quality, causing a big concern for consumers when purchasing products. Apparently, beside price, what makes people pay attention is the quality as well as the origin of products. They are usually afraid of buying poor quality products affecting their health.
Unqualified products usually come from equipment and factories that do not meet the standard. And this is also the initial root cause that our team GenZ Quest focuses on and wants to deal with.

SDGs 13 – Climate change and SDGs 15 – Life on land

Agriculture is supposed to be the backbone of Vietnam’s economy and it is also considered to be one of the most possible factors contributing to long-term climate change and damaging life on land, specifically:

The overuse of chemical fertilizer in agriculture can generate a large amount of CH4 – a substance that causes a stronger greenhouse effect than CO2. Moreover, the accumulation of chemical fertilizer in soil for a long time can lead to soil, water or even air pollution; negatively affecting life on land in different aspects such as people’s health, poor quality resources…..

During planting periods, almost every farmer uses pesticide to control crop-damaging pests and insects and optimize crop yield. Similar to chemical fertilizer, pesticide also causes many negative effects such as climate change and different types of pollution. Additionally, pesticide can destroy natural enemies of pests, leading to ecological imbalance.

SDGs 17: Partnership for the Goals

Obviously, the success of a business will depend on its reputation and this is what every owner of a business is looking for and we are not an exception. However, we know that our longan fruit products still have limited recognition and we have to try our best to find and collaborate with numerous potential partners in order to officially export our Hung Yen longan products to different markets in Vietnam as well as around the world.

A3. Solution effectiveness and ESG integration

With the aforementioned root causes, GBO is actively seeking for effective solutions by complying with ESG standards

About the environment: as I mentioned above, what we are concerned about is how to deal with the problems of climate change and life on land that we mentioned above. At GBO, traditional fertilizer has been replaced by organic fertilizer to limit the negative consequences that can dramatically cause climate change and damage life on land. We are also motivated to remove the use of pesticide in the longan fruit products so as to not only protect the environment but also protect our consumers’ health

With the aforementioned root causes, GBO is actively seeking effective solutions by adhering to ESG standards.

Environmental Aspect: As mentioned earlier, our concern is how to address climate change and life on land. At GBO, traditional fertilizers have been replaced with organic fertilizers to mitigate the negative consequences that could lead to climate change and the degradation of life on land. We are also committed to eliminating the use of pesticides in our longan products to protect both the environment and consumer health.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions: We use clean technology and organic farming to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to environmental protection and mitigating the impact of climate change.
Chemical Use: GBO has transitioned to using organic fertilizers and biological pesticides, minimizing negative environmental impacts and ensuring consumer safety.
Soil Conservation: We apply sustainable farming methods such as crop rotation and green manuring to protect soil fertility and structure.
Waste Management: We optimize the reuse of agricultural waste, such as crop residues and manure, to minimize the amount of waste released into the environment.

2. About the social: obviously, our project always wants to bring the best quality product to consumers so as to protect their health and enhance their loyalty. To do that, our GBO decided to invest in upgrading the quality of equipment and factories meeting the standard over the time in order to provide the highest quality longan fruit products to consumers.

Moreover, as I mentioned above, what our project is struggling with is the limitation of partnership and product recognition. Therefore, we are actively seeking for collaboration with numerous potential partners as well as participating in educational workshops and many activities relating to community engagement in order to bring our longan fruit products to different markets from domestic to foreign ones

Social Aspect: Clearly, our project always aims to deliver the best quality products to consumers to protect their health and enhance their loyalty. To achieve this, GBO has decided to invest in upgrading the quality of equipment and facilities over time to meet standards and provide the highest quality longan products to consumers.

Community Contribution: The project supports the local community through activities such as education, training, and raising public awareness, contributing to an improved quality of life.
Food Safety: GBO is committed to ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products through strict certifications and inspections.
Gender Equality: GBO focuses on creating an equal working environment for both men and women, ensuring everyone has the same opportunities for career development.
Health and Welfare: GBO concentrates on providing safe and nutritious agricultural products to enhance community health.

3. Governant

Mission and Vision Statements:

Mission: To develop sustainable organic longan farming regions, preserve rare longan varieties, and elevate the Hung Yen longan brand in the international market, contributing to positive social impact for the community.
Vision: To become a model for organic longan farming, pioneering in the preservation of rare longan varieties and enhancing the Hung Yen longan brand on the international market, contributing to a prosperous life for the community.
Explanation: GBO’s mission and vision statements reflect a strong commitment to sustainable agricultural development, the preservation of agricultural cultural heritage, and the enhancement of product value. They not only guide the project’s direction but also reflect long-term goals in making a positive contribution to the community and society.

Building Corporate Culture:

Friendly and Creative Environment: GBO is committed to creating a friendly work environment that encourages creativity. We believe that fostering a positive and supportive corporate culture will enhance employee engagement and performance while also promoting continuous innovation and improvement.

Compliance Control Mechanisms:

Strict Compliance Controls: GBO has established stringent control mechanisms to ensure compliance with legal regulations and ESG standards. This includes regular inspections, internal evaluations, and adherence to environmental, food safety, and labor regulations.

Employee Motivation:

Intrinsic Motivation: We provide a work environment where employees feel valued and encouraged to develop themselves. We offer opportunities for employees to participate in creative projects and process improvements, such as engaging in the company’s startup initiatives, taking on specialized roles, and receiving compensation based on working hours and job performance. Additionally, employees are encouraged to participate in seminars, training courses, and projects with key roles, such as the She Trade event and Go Export initiative.
Extrinsic Motivation: We offer competitive rewards and benefits, including salaries, health insurance, and career development programs. We believe that adopting new business models will help employees and stakeholders achieve better incomes, live happier and healthier lives, and generate long-term value.

Utilizing Technology (Digitization) in Processes:

Traceability: GBO applies digital technology to control information at every stage of the production and management process. This includes using a traceability system for crops, helping to monitor and manage product quality from cultivation to when it reaches consumers. Technology ensures transparency, enhances management efficiency, and meets quality standards.
LARK Application: We use the LARK application for HR management and work quality control, ensuring fairness for all employees.

QR Code Traceability for Each Longan Tree:

B. SOCIAL IMPACT ACCELERATION

B1. Mechanisms to accelerate impacts

Geographical expansion strategies

Objective: Expanding the scope of cultivation and consumption of Hung Yen Province products to the national and international markets

From Year 1 to Year 2:

Developing farming area by increasing the area of organic longan through:

Applying the standardized model at Tien Chau Cooperative

Expanding to other Cooperative in Hung Yen Province and lands having suitable soil conditions outside the province

Building processing infrastructure by:

Investing in modern processing factories
Replacing traditional manual processing methods

Establishing distribution network

Expanding product distribution network in big cities such as Ha Noi, Hưng Yên

From Year 3 to Year 5:

Exporting products by:

Penetrating international markets
Focusing on countries with high demand for organic fruits such as Japan, Korea, and the EU

Cooperating internationally by:

Associating with international organic agriculture organizations to apply advanced standard and technology

Impact depth expansion strategies

Objective: Increasing the life quality of farmers and consumers through improved products and production processes.

From Year 1 to Year 2:

Training and developing farmers by:

Organizing in-depth training courses on organic farming techniques and preserving precious longan varieties, helping farmers improve productivity and product quality

Increasing added value

Developing more products manufactured from fresh longan fruit such as dried longan wrapped lotus seed, longan syrup (under experiment)

From Year 3 to Year 5:

Standardizing the product quality through:

Ensuring that all products meet national and international organic certification
Building the reputation of “Hung Yen Logan” brand in the market
Testing the quality of products annually
Using organic fertilizers
Classifying the quality of longan

- Type 1: moderately ripe longan fruits, reaching from 56 to 60 fruits/kg

Type 2: smaller than type 1, reaching from 70 to 80 fruits/kg

Increasing consumer awareness through:
Promoting educational campaigns about the benefits of organic products and their positive impacts on health to raise awareness and create sustainable consumption habits in the community
Conducting customer interviews to create a communication campaign to promote the quality of products and the effects of organic products on social media platforms (Facebook, website)

: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/15g23swofULcKqT_XcrGLsXT7bFy7Z_IN ) Interview Farmer

Combining with experiential travel by:

Coordinating with the Department of Culture and Information of Hung Yen Province to promote local culture
Implementing a lotus development project in Hung Yen Province to attract tourists to visit and experience the organic, natural, environmentally friendly ecosystem during lotus, longan flower season and longan harvest.

C. Implemented Roadmap

Phase 1 (from Year 1 to Year 2)

Expanding longan growing areas and investing in processing infrastructure
Training and supporting farmer to convert to organic farming
Building brand and domestic distribution network

Phase 2 (from Year 3 to Year 5)
Penetrating international markets and establishing strategic partnerships
Improving product quality and achieving international certification
Strengthening consumer education and building organic communities

In 2024:

Having connected nearly 50 universities in Ha Noi and Hung Yen through sponsoring university competitions and graduation projects

B2. Financial stability and profitability

Based on our business model, our revenue comes from 4 main sources:

Product combo packages and combinations with combined gift and tea break events
Direct Sales through E-commerce Store and direct store
Selling auxiliary products: honey, lotus seeds, cassava
Experience tour during longan and lotus season

Our project always pays attention to how to effectively divide the appropriate revenue for the operation of each department without facing surplus or deficit. Based on the statistic of annual revenue, we computed the approximate percentage of expense gained from selling products for each department:

Production costs	50%
Management & operation costs	23,33%
Marketing & Sales costs	16,67%
R&D costs	6,67%
Community operation & development costs	3,33%

Based on the financial efficiency of the production of organic longan from our farmers, we have tried to compute the proportion of ROI since our beginning and our expectation for the next 5 years from 2025 to 2029:

Since our longan fruit products have been just in the initial steps, our ROI statistic was not so high at the beginning. However, we expect that this index will be improved in the near future based on the current operation as well as capacity of our project.

ince the establishment, our project has faced numerous risks relating to finance but they are all well-addressed, specifically:

At first, our project faced the shortage of money that prevent us from buying enough equipments used to serve our processing process; which enabled us not to produce products meeting our expectation

→ However, we were luckily funded by the government to buy qualified equipment , which made us become more confident and helped us demonstrate our growth potential at that time and in the future.

Next, what we are worrying about is the selling price. Obviously, every customer wants to buy products having high quality and low price. However, in order to stabilize our long-term operation, we can not set a low price that our customers want.

→ Therefore, we have to focus more on marketing as well as educational activities with the aim of convincing them that the price that we set is totally acceptable and affordable when comparing with our product’s quality.

bility between the capabilities of members of team GenZ Quest and project requirements:

FOUNDERS

Ms Tran Thi Ngoc Dung (Founder – CEO)

Education:

Graduated from Son Tay High School for the Gifted in Mathematics
Bachelor of International Economic Law of Hanoi Law University and Bachelor of English of VNU University of Languages and International Studies

Experience:

20+ years of management experience and strategic thinking at Danish Joint Venture Company and Viettel Group

Startup:
Establishing Giabaco in 2018 to create jobs and develop communities in fashion and manufacturing industry
6 years of startup experience with EduChic brand, Gia Bao fashion and education

Mr Nguyen Quang Dien (Co-Founder – PD)

Chairman of Tien Chau Pho Hien Cooperative
20+ years of experience in production, processing and trading of Hung Yen logan and local products
Owner of the lotus development project in Hung Yen province
Used to be the Director of a company with 10 years of experience in packaging printing

ADVISORS

Mrs Nguyen Thi Ai Nghia

Education

2012 – 2015: Doctoral Student in Agricultural Sciences at Kyushu University, Japan
2009 – 2011: Master’s Student in International Organic Agriculture/International Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Göttingen, Germany
1999 – 2003: University Student majoring in Crop Science at Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA)

Experience
5+ years of experience in researching and developing organic production processes

Mr Vu Dinh Cuong

Education
Bachelor of Horticulture of Tay Nguyen University
Master of Crop Science
Experienced in certifications: organic, Jas
Technical consultant and certification expert for more than 17 projects

TEAM MEMBERS

Ms Nguyen Thi Hue

Senior majoring in High-tech Agriculture at Vietnam National University of Agriculture
2 years of experience in participating in projects, training courses relating to agriculture
Top 10 Greenathon Competition at BUV
Intern at Cooperatives, Companies and work with farmers

2. Ms Huynh Chau Nhat Anh

Junior majoring in International Business Economics at Foreign Trade University
Having experience in solving business cases and analyzing financial data
Intern at Department of Planning and Investment

3.Ms Minh Ngoc

Sophomore majoring in Management Information Systems at National Economics University
Top 10 Startup City Competition 2024
Top 6 Marketing Journey Competition 2024
Organizing Committee, member of many projects related to Business Development, Startup…

4. Ms Thu Giang

3rd year student majoring in Marketing Communications at the Academy of Journalism and Communication
Champion of the Marketing Journey contest
Working at METUB NETWORK
Runner-up of Rookie Camp 2023 Media Summer Camp
Core Team extended at Google Developer Group Hanoi 2023

5. Ms Phạm Thị Yên

Attractive human resources strategy

Our human resources are built on the principles of sustainable development and cooperation. We not only focus on recruiting highly qualified people, but also encourage collaboration, creativity and commitment to the project’s mission.

Continuously recruiting and training: we constantly seek and develop new talent to ensure that our human resources are always innovating and adapting to new challenges. Personnel will be able to participate in courses, corporate training and projects of other organizations to improve skills and professional knowledge

Collaborating with numerous universities: we associate and collaborate with many top universities such as Vietnam National University of Agriculture, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Foreign Trade University, National Economics University, Thuongmai University…..This not only helps us access potential human resources but also contributes to the development of the academic community and the improvement of educational quality

Partnership and collaboration

B.4 Taking advantages of Partnership and Stakeholders to amplify social impacts

We actively participate in green, social projects, seminars and fairs to connect with partners with the same ideology and mission to create a sustainable green agricultural ecosystem. By participating in the SIB project series organized by Isee Covid, our project was selected to become one of the top 30 SIBs; allowing us to connect with many important partners

Our project cooperates with many strategic partners, including HIBISO – a unit producing tea from soluble perilla leaves with extensive experience in exporting to major markets such as the US, Canada, and the Netherlands. HIBISO is not only a production and export partner but also a bridge to promote agricultural products and support our project to develop together.

Partnering with HIBISO to display longan fruit product and connect more foreign partners

We cooperate with many top universities to reach young human resources – GenZ. This group plays important role in preserving and developing Vietnamese agriculture through creativity, enthusiasm, and desire for practical experience

Being supported by the press and local events

We participate in display and trade promotion events to attract more attention from the press agencies to communicate our project. This support not only helps raise public awareness but also creates advantageous conditions for developing and amplifying social impacts; contributing to building a green agricultural ecosystem that brings long-term benefits to the community and stakeholders.

C. ESG REPORTING

Measurement and Reporting & 2. Compliance with ESG standards and frameworks

To measure and report the impacts of our project, we strictly comply with the standards of ESG criteria.

Environment: our project has been just in the initial steps of penetrating many different markets in the near future in case our longan fruit products can meet quality requirements. Therefore, at present, we can not measure or report the influences of our project through criteria relating to the environment. However, our project is expected to commit to some criteria used to measure and report our impacts towards the environment such as greenhouse effect, water usage & efficiency, and waste & recycling….

Social: in this sector, our team GenZ Quest mainly focuses on evaluating the project impacts through the following measurement:

+Volunteer hours: we do not simply increase our product recognition just simply by increasing market penetration, our team GenZ Quest also pays more attention to voluntary activities which helps us bring our longan fruit products to all people in Vietnam and in the world.

+Product safety & quality: this is our top priority when manufacturing longan fruit products. We always try to produce and deliver longan fruit products having the best quality to consumers in order to not only increase their experience but also protect their health. As I mentioned above, our longan fruit products got the “certificate of compliance with food safety regulations” from Hung Yen Province – a strong guarantee we can commit our consumers to their long-term health when using our longan fruit products

+ Customer satisfaction: one of the important ways to evaluate the effectiveness of a project is to rely on the level of customer satisfaction. Members of team GenZ Quest always try to make customers feel satisfied with our longan fruit products by providing the best quality products, eye-catching packaging, the suitable price as well as asking them about their feeling towards our longan fruit products since customers will be the main force helping us bring longan fruit products to other potential customers and increase our product reputation.

D. Learning Curve

From the surveys and consumers’ needs and desires, we realized that it is necessary to further promote communication about cultural values, history, stories about the longan trees and the effects of longan trees to help consumers better understand the value of Hung Yen longan trees. At the same time, they can also access and consume safe, quality products with clear origin.

According to the expert feedbacks, we also realized that we need to do more research on the potential market, specifically China market because our products, according to feedbacks, are more suitable for Asian appetite