As the Chinese proverb goes, the favour of a drop of water should be reciprocated with the gratitude of a fountain of water (滴水之情,以泉相报). Such is the motto of Jane Sun, the CEO of Ctrip, China’s most successful online travel platform with a multi-billion valuation. True to her values, Jane has donated generously to scholarships to enable NUS students to embark on their NOC journeys to Beijing and Shanghai. On the 21st of April, SHEN had the rare opportunity to visit Ctrip’s headquarters and speak to with Jane to understand more about her and the company. Jane Sun came from a humble background from a lower tier Chinese city, but was given the rare opportunity during her university days to further her studies in the US. During her time there, she was blessed to have been supported by a prominent professor and his wife who taught her many invaluable life lessons and treated her as part of their family. As success followed, she said that the professor always told her that the best form of reciprocity for his kindness was to pass it on to other students in need. Today, Jane has donated multiple scholarships to help students not only in local universities, but also other universities in Hong Kong and Singapore such as NUS to help lighten their financial burden. During our interaction with Jane, she gave advice on her perspectives on struggles in life. As a poor student, she did not have it easy even with the support of her professor. She emphasised that 90% of the outcome of any struggle depends on how each individual approaches the problem, and seeing it as something positive and challenging can help shape a better outcome. As we step into the working world in future, this would be crucially important with more responsibilities coming our way. In Asian societies, many women strive for a balance between their career and family. Jane has done so even as a senior executive in the company by maintaining a high level of efficiency in her work, regular exercise, as well as a positive attitude toward her work. She commented: “Family is integral to women at a fundamentally biological level. I want to be able to set a role model for my two daughters and show them that it is possible to be a good mother while holding a full-time job.” “ An individual’s capability and ability to work in a team is more important than appearance” Jane said this when she spoke about her time as a female senior executive with a small stature, which she related to when she led a majority-female team on Ctrip’s journey to becoming listed in NASDAQ back in 2003. Today, Ctrip encourages female leadership and is led by a significant number of female senior executives, a step ahead as compared to other Chinese companies. As a multi-million enterprise, Jane explains the difficulty in running such a huge company while staying ahead of her competitors. Innovation has been one of the main focuses of Ctrip to maintain its competitive edge, with two key programs in the company known as the Young Tiger initiative as well as the Global Stage. Through these two programs, young employees who understand the business on the ground level and have direct interaction with customers have a channel to express their new ideas to the senior executives in the companies and execute their plans if deemed feasible. Jane quoted the example of a young director who proposed a business plan to explore the possibility of providing chartered bus services. Today, this Young Tiger initiative is a profitable channel for Ctrip with substantial success. After the interaction with Jane Sun, Ctrip brought us on a tour and gave us a glimpse of how Ctrip manages the millions of online transactions for flights, train tickets and accommodation in their daily operations. The numerous screens showing the transactions in real-time was astounding, and could be activated using voice control by the operators. Look, Singapore is 6th in place for travel destinations! At the end of the tour, we were introduced to the long and illustrious history of Ctrip from its founding in 1999 to its scale today.
It has been a great honour to be able to visit the headquarters of Ctrip and see in person the growing journey of China’s largest online travel booking platform which has made travelling in China extremely convenient even for us Singaporeans. Check out Ctrip’s website at http://english.ctrip.com/!
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SHEN
申城 (shen cheng) is an ancient name for Shanghai.
As a group of NUS and NOC students who are in Shanghai for a year-long internship programme, we have named our student organisation as SHEN (Shanghai House of Entrepreneurs). Archives
November 2017
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