GoGoVan keeps climbing

I had a happy reunion last week with Steven Lam Hoi-yuen and Reeve Kwan Chun-man, cofounders of GoGoVan.

I say reunion as we first met in 2017 at Sing Tao's Leader of the Year awards presentation when they jointly received the Young Entrepreneur prize.

In the years that followed, their company soared even higher, expanding its presence to multiple countries in Asia.

As their business portfolio diversifies, the company changed its name to GoGoX and began operating in the mainland under another brand.

Lam and Kwan attended community college in the US together before going to university there while working part time.

After returning to Hong Kong, they joined up with a few other school mates to set up a company, which has since become a unicorn valued at more than US$1 billion (HK$7.8 billion).

Lam said they started out with HK$20,000 and obtained financial support from the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund which releases subsidies by installments.

At one point, the company ran out of capital before they were due to receive the next payout.

Lam sought help from his Cyberport contact, Chung Wai-keung, currently innovation and technology undersecretary, by calling him every day.

Fortunately, they secured an early release of the subsidy to tide the company over.

The five cofounders of GoGoX are either friends or schoolmates. These young people gradually formed a circle.

One of them is local entrepreneur Ricky Chiu Yin-to, who also returned to Hong Kong to run a start-up after studying in the US.

Chiu is founder of a company that makes rapid antigen test kits, and had even been the company's worker No 1.

Siu Sai-wo is publisher of Sing Tao Daily