More breadth than depth
Ask Bryan Lim if he ever thought he would one day be working on a strawberry farm in New York, observing bee pollination patterns, or hanging 6 metres high trying to install bee nets some 15,348 kilometres away from home, and the answer would be no.
An NUS Business School Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) graduate, Bryan is currently working at Oishii in New York — the largest indoor strawberry vertical farm in the world that supplies to major supermarkets like Whole Foods in the Northeast of the US. He currently oversees farm deployment, from conception, design, and construction to operation at Oishii, the very same agritech startup he interned with from 2019–2020 under the prestigious NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) New York programme.
A curious person whose interests run the entire gamut — from the study of semicolons, creating the perfect espresso recipe, to learning the ugly truth about the blood diamond trade — Bryan is a self-professed generalist who prefers breadth to depth and is ever-ready to dive in and try new things.
This same trait saw Bryan taking up internships at NodeFlair and Vidfish in his first and second years respectively when he was a student at NUS Business School. “Working at NodeFlair has taught me to execute tasks quickly and with confidence, while my stint at Vidfish gave me the valuable experience of wearing multiple hats to solve problems outside of my domain expertise,” he reflects.
Bryan (first from right) during his internship, with fellow NUS students and alumni from team NodeFlair.
Of perspectives and diversity
Describing the NUS Bizad culture as fun and familial, Bryan felt that the club’s environment helped him forge strong friendships in his NUS years and grow into a person who enjoys working in groups. Across the globe, Bryan continues to live by the same values, fostering a community at work and building bonds with his diverse co-workers at Oishii.
A memorable experience for Bryan was the BIZAD Leadership Development Programme (BLDP) which provides NUS Business students additional development opportunities to realise their leadership potential, such as the BLDP Tri-Uni Summer programme that allowed Bryan to travel to top universities like Tsinghua University in China and the Indian School of Business for overseas study missions where he learned more about their markets and best practices from their best professors and students.
Bryan (first row, second from left) on an excursion with fellow Tri-Uni Summer Programme students he met during the NUS Business BLDP.
Standing in good stead
On how his NUS Business School experience has stood him in good stead for his work in the Big Apple at Oishii, Bryan reflected that having prior exposure to various cultures has put him in a better position to face unique challenges overseas.
Bryan also credited his Business Analytics courses for his current leverage at work. “I enjoyed the analytic perspective that I'd learned through DBA3702: Descriptive Analytics with R. Through the course, I learned how to visualise data and distil insight from numbers. It also helps me approach problems in a more strategic way in my current work. For example, I start off understanding what question I want to answer, before diving into the analysis,” he recounts.
Toss of a coin
When deciding which NOC location to apply to, Bryan did not want to be bound by conventional expectations and was quite freewheeling in his decision-making process. He happily admits that NOC New York only landed on his radar because its diversity would offer him more interesting opportunities. “To be honest, working at a strawberry farm was the furthest thing from my mind! But what caught my attention was that Oishii was the only company whose founder bothered to interview me personally; most other firms would deploy their recruiters to do the internship interviews.”
Bryan accepted the internship at the new, lean startup, taking on a job scope that read like a blank slate: do whatever it takes to get things done. Co-founded by a passionate ex-Marine, the next few months literally saw Bryan greasing his elbows to build a farm at Oishii — he gamely counts construction work, dealing with blue-collar workers, understanding the plumbing system and drilling into the walls of buildings to install security cameras in winter as some of the many tasks he has undertaken.
“These are stories we recount over and over again when we recall our most challenging times. The hours were crazy and all my friends were wondering why I was doing this. But at Oishii, they will let you grow by giving you autonomy and responsibility whenever you are ready to progress. I took a chance on them – and it paid off!” he laughs.
The school we call life
Since arriving in New York, Bryan has plunged himself headlong into its alleys thrumming with interesting activities and neighbourhoods. Bryan shared that one of the best things about the dynamic city is that one can trade in a book for a jar of pickles, stumble into a balloon museum, or visit a theatre by the waterside — all at the same time!
On which part of the NOC experience he most valued, the Business graduate thoughtfully shares: “Being introduced to New York — her culture, her diversity, and the interesting work I do.”
As part of the NOC programme, Bryan and his NOC New York peers took two modules from NUS Enterprise Academy — TR3203T: Start-up Case Study & Analysis and TR4049N: Seminars in Entrepreneurship - Lean Startup: Market Validation. He recalls a truly unprecedented but important character-developing experience when working on a project for a course: “I remember this one time when I was knocking on doors of big, brown stone houses in Downtown Brooklyn when it was pouring outside, and I was asking anyone who was willing to listen for 30 seconds what they thought of the delivery package theft issue in their neighbourhood.”
Bryan (fourth from left) and his NOC New York batchmates on a trip to Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Strawberry fields forever
Bryan subsequently returned to Singapore and finished his NUS BBA degree before heading back to Oishii as a full-time staff member. He felt compelled to continue his journey there: “Oishii is a place where I can learn and grow a lot. I love the people there, as well as the city and the opportunities it offers. The work I do at Oishii is interesting, meaningful and challenging, and I like taking responsibility for something I started even though the work is tough and the hours gruelling. I also have an inspirational and unorthodox boss who has greatly influenced me to think outside of the box.”
Bryan (back row, second from left) and his colleagues from Oishii during NOC.
Right now, his key role is the project management of Oishii’s futuristic farm. “The approach that Oishii has taken in its development is very different from the traditional agricultural industry — from our automation and our robotic strategy to our operations deployment,” Bryan shares.
The next milestone that Bryan is setting for himself is to pioneer and build a scalable, viable indoor growing system for high quality produce: “Our ultimate goal is to make delicious, eco-friendly produce available to everyone all year round — now, that will be the real gamechanger.”
Reflecting on how NUS has shaped his journey thus far, Bryan concludes:
