“In order for a drowning man to be saved, he must first, ask for help,” Mr Liu says. Noting further that while businesses should first do what they can to help themselves, like cutting unnecessary costs, they will also require support from other sources like the local community, and the government.”

Many SMEs across Singapore are starting to feel the financial crunch since the start of Circuit Breaker restrictions 2 months ago. While the restrictions are being progressively eased, many SMEs are still unable to operate due to not being part of the essential services sector. This has caused more uncertainties as they adapt to a new normal.

In this series, we speak people within our community including investors and businesses to see how they are reacting to the on-going situation, and how it has affected their investments and businesses to help bridge the gap between consumers and business owners. Today we talk to an investor in our community, Mr Liu Yu Sheng.

Having joined BRDGE in early 2019, Mr Liu Yu Sheng, considers himself far from an experienced investor. Having already started looking for ways to diversify his income through fixed deposits, coupons and stock trading, after assessing various investment tools, he finally decided to be part of the crowdfunding community with BRDGE as his platform of choice.

Despite the crash brought by the Coronavirus situation, Mr Liu decided to hold on to his stocks instead of panic selling. Seeing as how risky the market was, he also decided against aggressively buying whatever low stocks were available at the time.

While he doesn’t think it’s a good time for crowdfunding, he thinks what SeedIn is doing now is good for SMEs that are currently struggling. Besides having extended some deals for 6 months for some local construction companies, he has noted that they did not aggressively issue new loans to SMEs. Adding on that “these movements are quite in-line with the direction I am taking to manage my finances during this time which is what I appreciate.”

Viewing the Resilience Budget of 48 Billion from the government as positive, Mr Liu believes that Singaporeans are more than willing to help support SMEs during this troubling time. With the positive response the citizens gave to the budget, he believes that citizens can bridge the divide between business owners and everyone else supports society as a whole.

“In order for a drowning man to be saved, he must ask for help,” Mr Liu says. Noting further that while businesses should first do what they can to help themselves, like cutting unnecessary costs, they will also require support from other sources like the local community, and the government too.

While 2020 has been more challenging than he thought, he believes it would be the same for everyone. Quoting a Chinese Idiom that says that we should not cease to do a good thing, even though it may look insignificant, Mr Liu believes that as Singaporeans we benefit from the country’s economic growth that allows us to enjoy many luxuries in our life like travel.

He continues that by helping local businesses, you’re not just helping others, you’re also helping everyone including yourself creating a ‘Bridge’ to cross over obstacles in this difficult time. That by providing support for businesses, we will all be able to get past these times with a little more ease.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you have not already done so, enter our poll and tell us about your willingness to help our good local SMEs!