Sai Surya Yarlagadda (right) and Irsyad Ramthan founded Young Sustainable Impact Southeast Asia in 2017. They have built a community of 13,000 young entrepreneurs and incubated 14 sustainability startups. Sai Surya Yarlagadda and Irsyad Ramthan founded Young Sustainable Impact Southeast Asia (YSI SEA) in 2017, when they were engineering students at National University of Singapore (NUS). YSI SEA is a social enterprise born out of an idea that started in Oslo , Norway to encourage youths around the world to start sustainability ventures, using the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a framework. The duo’s inspiration to launch YSI SEA came to them after seeing 10,053 young entrepreneurs—which YSI calls ‘earthpreneurs’—from 170 countries apply for 25 slots on YSI’s online innovation programme. Yarlagadda and Ramthan recognise that Southeast Asia has its own unique set of sustainability problems, which is why YSI SEA aims to empower youths to launch businesses that solve problems in their own countries. The organisation focuses on energy transition, food and agriculture, and the circular economy, and is backed by Temasek Foundation Ecosperity, the philanthrophic arm of state investment firm Temasek. Over the course of three years, YSI SEA has built a community of 13,000 young […]
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