Tse Ka Kui

Tse Ka Kui (born 10 September 1948) is an active social entrepreneur in Hong Kong. Tse has held senior executive positions in Shui On Group for ten years before setting up his own management consulting company, K K Tse & Associates in 1992. He was a co-founder Dialogue in the Dark (Hong Kong) Ltd., which brought Dialogue in the Dark to Hong Kong and China in 2008. In 2012, he found Education for Good CIC Limited with the social cause to “inspire everyone to become a changemaker and enable every business to become a social business”.

Early career

Tse graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with double majors in Sociology and Economics. He held a Ph.D. degree in sociology from The University of Manchester.Tse began his working career as Personnel Manager of the Lam Soon Group in Hong Kong. He then went to United Kingdom to study for an MBA degree which he obtained in 1981. While studying there, he wrote the book "Marks & Spencer: Anatomy of Britain's Most Efficiently Managed Company"（Oxford: Pergamon Press1985）, which was also published in Chinese and Russian.

Upon his return to Hong Kong, Tse joined Shui On Group. He left employment in 1992 to set up his own consultancy firm K K Tse & Associates. His clients included such well-known business names as CLP Group, VTech, Dah Chong Hong and Lenovo Group.

Dialogue in the Dark

Dialogue in the Dark (Hong Kong) Limited was jointly found by Tse and Patrick Cheung. The successful launch of the social enterprise was a pivotal milestone in Hong Kong’s social business development. It was established with and still operates on private investment, without any subsidies from the government. The company achieved financial breakeven in the seventh month of its operation, and started to generate profits in its second year.

Dialogue in the Dark (Hong Kong) Limited has demonstrated to Hong Kong social enterprises a novel method of raising investment capital. HKD$5,600,000 start-up capital was collected from 20 private individuals who identified themselves with the objectives and mission of the company. No loans or donations were obtained from other parties and charities, which has been the traditional way of getting funding for local social enterprises.

The company has a clear set of guidelines regarding the distribution of profits. Not less than one-third of the profits is reinvested into the company for sustainable development. One-third would be allocated to the newly established Dialogue in the Dark Foundation which supports visually and aurally challenged persons in pursuit of their ambitions and subsidizes low-income persons for participating in events organized by Dialogue in the Dark (Hong Kong) Limited. Last but not least, not more than one-third would be distributed as dividends to shareholders.^[1] Dividends have been distributed starting from the third year of operation. Currently, Dialogue in the Dark Foundation is endowed with more than HKD1 million in funds. In its fourth year of operation, the company was endorsed by TripAdvisoras the most popular and best valued tourist site in Hong Kong amongst hundreds of other local tourist attractions.^[2]

Education for Good CIC Ltd.

In 2012, Tse and Rebecca Choy established Education for Good CIC Limited. The institute aims at nurturing the future generations of social entrepreneurs. Financial breakeven was achieved within two years of operation.^[3]

Public Service

Tse has been a member of the Government-appointed Social Enterprise Advisory Committee since 2010.

Publications

Tse is the editor of the first book on social entrepreneurship in Hong Kong 《新愚公移山: 十個社會企業創業者的故事》(2007) and a second book on another 10 local social entrepreneurs《社會企業妙點子》(2008). He is the founding editor of the biweekly Social Entrepreneurs Newsletter, published electronically since June 2007. He organized the Chinese translation of the book Everyday Legends: Stories of 20 Great UK Social Entrepreneurs, which came out in Chinese in mid-2008. He co-authored the book《公益創業: 青年創業與中年轉業的新選擇》(2009).

Experience

References