“I always knew,” says Ms Yeo, “any business that we run together had to have a social impact.” With that in mind, she used agriculture and technology as tools to educate others.

 

The farm was featured by CNN International in December 2020, the first non-profit organisation in Mauritius to have done so. 

 

“That [CNN feature] was very validating, and that came four or five years after we started [Farmcity],” she says.

Unable to return to Mauritius, the Oxenhams decided to continue their good work in Singapore. Due to high land prices in Singapore, they decided to open an e-commerce store, to match the Singaporean lifestyle. 

 

Compressing their knowledge on farming into a box, the Mighty Growers Kit was created. The kit can also be turned into a game, allowing for “step-by-step instructions in bite-sized pieces” to customers, who can sometimes be as young as three years old.

 

Mr Krishen Virasawmy, 38, was one of her earliest Singaporean customers. The Covid-19 period gave him more time to pick up gardening as a hobby, and was introduced to Farmcity by a friend when looking for soil online. 

 

“Kelly provided with frequent videos and tips about gardening, which is very helpful (sic),” said Mr Virasawmy, who found that his plants were “more resilient and grew faster” with Farmcity’s help.

 

Farmcity is Ms Yeo’s first venture into entrepreneurship. She likened the feeling of owning her own business to being on a roller coaster ride.

 

“You get very high highs, and you get very low lows,” she says.

 

Her biggest inspiration? Her husband.

 

“Wes is a very successful entrepreneur,” she says, calling him the “visionary” of the pair, while she is the “planner”. As an entrepreneur, nothing goes as expected. 

 

“I always go to him, and be like, ‘OK, I can’t do this, I need to quit. I’ll find a stable job, you be the entrepreneur’,” she says. Mr Oxenham supports her by keeping it real with her. 

 

“I think the statistics show that 80 per cent of businesses that get started don’t succeed anyways,” he says, “so we don’t need to take it too hard.”

 

Ms Yeo smiled as she said, “If I wasn't doing it with him, I probably would not have started my own business,” before teasing her husband for blushing, “I think it’s also made our marriage stronger.” 

 

On 22 Nov 2021, Farmcity was nominated for the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award. Ms Yeo felt “very happy, very honoured, but also very scared” about the nomination. 

 

“I think that this is a great feather in our cap, so we’re really happy, I doubt we will win, but [we are] still very honoured to even be nominated,” she says.

 

To cope with the stress from running the business, she turns to her plants. 

 

She says, “Just one hour, that’s all I need, just spending time with the plants. I don't even need to be harvesting.” This helps her to “leave the farm feeling very energised and very calm”. In Singapore, tending to the plants in her balcony and office provide the same stress relief.

“We see the positive impact of farming on mental health, we’ve experienced it,” she says, “and we wish more people knew about that.”