2019 Austrade – Australia China Alumni Award for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Sponsor

This award recognises alumni who have demonstrated their entrepreneurial and/or innovative abilities in any industry sector.

Nominees can be the owner of, partner in, or investor in an innovative and forward-looking company, or they may have implemented successful entrepreneurial programs in a large company. All nominees should be able to show their creativity, resourcefulness and sustainability, as well as how their work has benefitted wider society.

To view the finalist of other categories, please click HERE

UNSW

QUT

UniMel

WINNER

Griffith

UniSA

Natalie has always considered herself an entrepreneur at heart: finding ways to disrupt conventional industry norms and processes while innovating solutions to existing problems.

Born and raised in Australia, Natalie has lived and worked across the globe for 20 years. Basing it purely on a hunch that Asia would play a bigger role in the global business economy, she moved to Singapore in 1999 with only AUD$1K. Since then, she has been delivering effective marketing and communication programs for a range of Fortune 500 companies and start-up companies on a global scale.

With over 20 years of international experience, Natalie has in-depth knowledge of the opportunities and challenges global and start-up companies face when it comes to branding, marketing and communications. In 2015, Natalie joined The Orangeblowfish as managing partner responsible for setting the strategic direction of the firm, the firm’s daily operations and international expansion plans while also playing lead strategist on many integrated communication projects.

Under Natalie’s leadership, The Orangeblowfish has expanded their service offering to three cities in China: Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhou with growth plans reaching Australia in the near future. Natalie’s strategic mindset and international experience enables her to innovate new product and service offerings, leveraging storytelling, creativity, art and technology to disrupt the way brands communicate with their audience.

Natalie considers herself a global citizen, and a connector that makes great things happen. As such, she is active in the global and local business community and has judged a number of industry events such as IABC International Gold Quill Awards and PRWeek Asia Awards; served as Co-Chair for the Marketing Committee (American Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai), Head of Speakers for TED x Shanghai Women, Committee Member for SME Committee (Australian Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai) and currently volunteers as a Mentor, with MentorWalk, mentoring women in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Natalie is a regular contributor and speaker on a range of topics from entrepreneurship, doing business in China, as well as cross-culture marketing and branding.

Natalie is currently based in Shanghai, and is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

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Now, eight years later, the bootstrapped company employs over 100 staff across retail, e-commerce, design and software engineering roles in its headquarters in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. CASETiFY has grown into the number one customizable tech accessories and lifestyle company on social media, with over 2 million followers on Facebook and Instagram. It builds, brands, manufactures and ships its own products to over 180 countries.

CASETiFY’s mission to empower self-expression is deployed through three key strategies – celebrity partnerships, retail channel expansion and brand design collaborations. In addition to encouraging other young leaders and innovators, Ng has spoken on entrepreneurship and sustainable business growth for the Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations and Hong Kong Trade Development Council and featured in various media articles (Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Tech in Asia, and Asia Tatler) showcasing young business talent in Asia.

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Mr Junyi Song

University of Melbourne alumnus Junyi Song is the embodiment of success in entrepreneurship and innovation. At under 30 years of age, Junyi has already founded or co-founded four companies(Elephant Robotics, vendingbot.com.au, JuneStudio and MagicScreen), holds 41 patents and four software copyrights, won the 2018 China Robotics Tech Leader Prize and in 2017 was recognised in both the China and Asia Forbes 30 Under 30. Junyi Song is recognised as both a highly accomplished innovator and entrepreneur.

Junyi co-founded Elephant Robotics in 2016, a technology company specializing in the design, R&D and production of robotics and automation equipment. Which produced Elephant, Panda and Catbot. Since its inception, the company and its founders have been reported in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and China Daily.

Already serving a range of industries around the world, including some Fortune 500 companies, the company were named in the Top 10 CES ‘China’s most innovative company’ list, won the ‘X-elerator award’ of Tsinghua economics and business entrepreneur accelerator and received the Gaogong golden globe ‘most investment value’ award. Most recently, their Catbot robot won the ‘industrial robot innovation award’ at CAIMRS.

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Yuchao Wang has won an Australian leadership fellowship to complete a Master degree at Griffith University in 2010.

Wang is the vice chairman of the Huzhou Qiushi Education Group (HQEG). He has built a mutually-beneficial collaboration with Griffith University that improves capacity for teachers, including sending HQEG teachers to Griffith University each year for intensive short courses, and hosting Griffith education students to HQEG for practicum placements. HQEG and Griffith University have jointly delivered a “Collaborative Direct English Entry Program”. The curriculum includes the national high school curriculum and Griffith University pre-university curriculum. The students then commence foundation studies before proceeding to a full undergraduate degree. This program has just commenced as of August 2019. 45 students coming from Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu have enrolled. This demonstrates the popularity of the program and confirms Wang’s entrepreneurship which is driven by his desire to create a brand new education program that serves students and their parents. This program has also made a great contribution to strengthening China-Australia long-term cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

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LOST, established in 2013, a series of reality escape room based on different historical adventure stories, embedded with tons of auto-gadgets, participants need to use their cooperation, intelligence, communication and observation skills to work together, solve the riddles, crack the codes and escape from the rooms within certain time.  The first store was located in Causeway Bay in 2013, and currently operating 13 branches in 8 countries: Canada, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Australia. Created over 100 different themed rooms, including Chinese and Western historical stories, Greek myths, and cradle of civilisations.  

At LOST, there is no language barrier so bring those different cultural background players participate together. Therefore, team building, corporate training are in high demand from local and international companies, government bodies etc. We also have a lot of professional coaches to perform our own designed analysis tool 16C, which using 16 different words start with C to analyse the participants throughout the games, such as Communication, Cooperation, Challenge, etc. A detailed debriefing will be conducted by our coach in order to let everyone have a deeper understanding and a higher productivity.  Some large corporations like real estate developers, airports and international companies also invited us to design and customise themed rooms at their venue.  In addition, since LOST is also very popular among of parents and children, thus LOST Junior was established in early of 2019.  Targeting age 6 to 14 and new escapers. STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics) elements has been embedded in the games as we believe children learn through play and learn how to create meaningful play experiences..  In the coming future, we determined to penetrate ASEAN and China market, it is our honour a Hong Kong brand to be found in different countries.

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