in the Philippines. About 20 of the Grayscale
staff had various disabilities. This successful
business won him the “Most Inspiring
Entrepreneur of the Year” award in the
Philippines in 2008.
“Marx is my hero. But damn it, why
can’t I do what he has done with his eye’s
closed!” remarked Ng. He then looked at
his businesses, and felt that his eLearning
business had a lot of potential. Increasingly
gaining comfort with Web 2.0, many of his
people were already working from home. “I
figured that the key must lie in leveraging the
power of the internet. I already knew that
persons with disabilities (PWDs) can acquire
the right skills and be productive. I had learnt
from Marx that it would be foolhardy to try
and start with too many PWDs, and certainly
not just the visually impaired.
Significant coincidences
Two significant things happened in late
2008/early 2009 for Ng. As a certified YPO
forum trainer, he trained a forum in Tokyo.
He learnt that one of the YPOers running
an American subsidiary in Tokyo had spent
US$100,000 in the past year on English
lessons for his executives, yet they still
couldn’t speak with any fluency. The second
coincidence was Ng’s daughter, Ashley,
joining him in the business. With her help,
they were able to develop their own-branded
product – EPiC Online (English Proficiency
in Conversation Online). Using Skype video
they started helping the American subsidiary
in Tokyo with coaching of their executives.
Filipino English coaches with good accents
were carefully selected, and trained not to
teach language, but rather to encourage
conversation and build confidence.
The sky opened up
“Our language coaches work from home.
And with this, the sky opened up. Today
we have more than a dozen PWDs in this
business. We are just a year old, and PWDs
make up about one third of our workforce.
We are still a very small business, but we
already have some very prominent clients,
and we are very busy working to secure
many more.”
Among the clients of EPiC Online are
McDonalds Thailand, a number of
prominent hotels, and multinational
companies in China. Kaplan University
in Singapore is offering EPiC Online to
its overseas students. An agreement was
signed earlier this year with the Beijing
Science Technology and Management
College (BSTMC), which also included
an arrangement where EPiC Online
will help BSTMC to develop a Chinese
equivalent for EPiC Online to market to
the developed world.
Virtual team, winning team
Not all his PWD staff members are language
coaches. The company has two operations
supervisors, Spohia and Delia, who are
wheelchair-bound due to polio as toddlers.
Rommel is their Accountant, who was also
stricken with polio when he was two. Their
Quality Assurance Supervisor, Villy, became
totally blind when he was 16. Their IT
Supervisor, Anthony, became a paraplegic,
from an accident as a seaman. Thomas’
Secretary, Vicky, was a pharmacist working
in Saudi Arabia when a car accident damaged
her spine. They also have a Japanese blind
girl in Bangkok, to help with their Japanese
clients, and a blind girl in Shaanxi, China to
deal with their Chinese clients.
Thomas’s Executive Assistant Ryan, has
been in a wheelchair since he was two.
“Ryan is very much involved in helping
me develop the business, as a partner,”
says Thomas.
The journey ahead
“So what’s next?” I asked. “Firstly, scale,”
says Thomas. “Our goal is to grow EPiC
Online (with CNPiC Online) 50 times in the
next five years. Even then, we would still only
have a small fraction of one percent of the
potential market. I expect my team to grow
to about 1,000 and I hope that more than
50 percent will be PWDs.” The Philippines
has a booming call centre business with
about 400,000 call centre agents serving
mostly the American market. “We are
already engaging American and Australian
language coaches, so that we can offer our
clients native speakers.” He went on to add
that the challenge will be finding enough
PWDs who are up to scratch. “We hope that
in coming years more PWDs will strive to
learn and to improve their skills. We call our
advocacy ‘the last mile,’ which means that
you have to do most of the hard work to be
ready to serve on a global platform, and we
will provide the opportunity by connecting
them from wherever they are.”
“And then there’s scope,” he continues.
“As you know, our people work from
home all over the country, and now even
overseas. So how does our creative IT team
support them? I only found this out when
I was on a trip to Malaysia, and my laptop
totally crashed on me. I bought a new
one, connected it to the Internet, went on
Skype with my IT person at home in the
Philippines, and started venting. He sent
me a link to download a software so that
he could take over my PC. He then told
me to go for my dinner and have a few
extra drinks at the bar. When I got back
to my hotel room that night, most of the
programs that I used were re-loaded on
my new laptop, including my back up files.
And my Microsoft Outlook was up and
running. I hardly missed a beat, and went
back straight to work. How cool is that? In
the following weeks and during my travels
through many countries I grew accustomed
to having my IT person take over my laptop,
fixing all sorts of things f ܈YK