From running an e-commerce business selling quirky products in the Southeast Asian region to a Software-As-a-Service (SaaS) startup, Combinesell, this is the entrepreneurship journey of SUSS Supply Chain Management student, Amanda Ho.
While her online store selling quirky products germinated and took off , Amanda and her co-founders found that they could not cope with the increase in sales volume and business operations bottlenecked. As luck would have it, what appeared a problem later became a brilliant business concept for Amanda and her team to start Combinesell – creating a single platform that could integrate all the various ecommerce platforms and enable overall management!
Amanda’s startup pivoted towards facilitating multi-channel e-commerce selling processes and became very successful owing to their desire to value-add to small and medium enterprises, consumers and the economy.
After graduating from polytechnic, Amanda embarked on a degree with SUSS, taking an interest to the Alibaba Cloud – SUSS Entrepreneurship Programme. Running Combinesell saw her spending much more time in her startup, hence, Amanda switched from full-time to part-time studies, making the most of the personalised learning and flexibility approach of her SUSS education.
Eventually, Alex Ng, Managing Director of Spaze Ventures, saw their potential and invested in Combinesell, while helping them with the applications for Startup SG Founder’s Grant. The grant allowed them to create their minimum viable product, test the market and validate their queries. Combinesell gradually saw customers giving feedback and started paying a small fee to use the software.
In less than two years after the investment, an international e-commerce company acquired CombineSell. Today, it serves over 40 clients and counting across Singapore, Malaysia, and India!
“When I heard about the beauty of this programme, I was inspired that I could do what I really love and fulfil module credits simultaneously,” shared Amanda of her Alibaba Cloud – SUSS Entrepreneurship programme experience today. She also credited the programme for offering mentorship and bridging connections with like-minded startup founders . Mingling and exchanging knowledge within the community made Amanda feel that she is not alone in this tough yet rewarding journey.
Today, she remains grateful for all the mentors that she had met and the doors that were open to meet her entrepreneurship needs.
Stay tuned for more stories on our student entrepreneurs!