Hong Kong · Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia
I turnwaste into beer.waste into beer
I build companies that shouldn't work, and then make them work. Started my first venture at 13. Exited at 16. Spent the last five years turning Hong Kong's surplus bread into craft beer that sells in 500+ stores, and turning a WhatsApp group into the city's largest founder community.
Now I spend most of my time helping other people do the same thing, faster.
Fun facts
Things a bio won't tell you.
- No BS
- I give no bullshit advice. Hopefully. If your idea has a hole in it, I'd rather say so in the first five minutes than the last.
- 25+
- Countries travelled, at 25 years old. Best ideas I've had all arrived somewhere I didn't live.
- IRL
- I like meeting people over a beer or a coffee, not a calendar invite. I also run a small coffee blog with my girlfriend.
- Less tech friendly than you'd expect from someone in startups. My entire life is chaotically managed in one app.
The story
Poor, hungry, driven, and stubborn about it.
I grew up in New Delhi, where pollution and waste are not an abstract topic, they are the air. I started my first venture at 13, teaching financial literacy to high-school students who were three years older than me. I sold it at 16. That taught me the only lesson that has actually compounded: nobody is coming. You either build the thing or you don't.
In 2020 I was a student at HKUST when four of us watched a bakery bin an entire day of unsold bread. Hong Kong throws away 3,600 tonnes of food every single day. That night we learned about kvass, beer fermented from bread, and the whole thing clicked. We entered Enactus with it, won the grand prize, and used the money to brew the first batch.
That batch became Breer. Today it has diverted over 109 tonnes of surplus bread, sells across 500+ retail and F&B locations in Hong Kong, ships in Singapore, and is landing in Vietnam and India. We brew with Maxim's, Pizza Hut, 7-Eleven, HK Tramways and Swire Properties. Forbes put us on the 30 Under 30 Asia list for Social Impact in 2023, and I was one of the youngest on it.
None of that is the point. The point is that a group of undergrads with no capital, no brewery and no permission built a category. If we could, so can the founder reading this at 2am wondering whether to quit. That belief is why I now spend most of my week on other people's companies: angel investing my own money into founders at zero, incubating and advising through Orange Juice Ventures, and building What You Building into the room I wish I'd had at 19.
“For the longest time the industry didn't take us seriously. Just a couple of kids trying to do a school project.”
Time Out Hong Kong
Stepping stones
- 2013First venture, financial literacy for high schoolers. Age 13.
- 2016Exited it. Age 16.
- 2020Breer founded at HKUST. Won the Enactus grand prize.
- 2021Champion, HKUST-Sino One-Million-Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition.
- 2022Innovation Award, Food Made Good HK. Maxim's partnership goes live.
- 2023Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Social Impact. BODW speaker.
- 2024Orange Juice Ventures. What You Building crosses 500 founders.
- NowBreer into Vietnam and India. Angel cheques. PhD Almanack.
Currently building
Four things I'm
in the weeds of.
Operator, not observer. Every one of these has my hands in it weekly, not a logo on a slide.
Breer
Upcycled craft beverages
We rescue surplus bread from 21+ Hong Kong bakeries and ferment it into craft beer, kombucha and non-alcoholic beverages. Bolo Bao IPA, Cocktail Bun NA Pale Ale, and a pizza-crust lager brewed with Pizza Hut. It isn't charity. It's a better supply chain that happens to be cheaper and tastes like the city it comes from.
Orange Juice Ventures
Founder-first venture studio
We incubate and advise young companies. Not a fund and not a cheque: we do the distribution, ops and unglamorous 0→1 work alongside the founder, in the room, weekly. If you're pre-revenue, under-networked and obsessed, you are exactly who we're built for.
What You Building?
HK's largest founder community
500+ builders, hackers and hipsters in one room. Monthly sessions, pitch clubs, mixers and the world's largest vibecoding hackathon. We've brought Ali Abdaal and Andrew Yeung to Hong Kong. The mission is blunt: make HK startups great again.
Rooted Origin
Functional mushroom coffee
Golden Mushroom Coffee: slow-roasted single-origin arabica folded with lion's mane, cordyceps, chaga and reishi. Half the caffeine of a normal cup, none of the 3pm collapse. It tastes like a chocolatey medium roast. The functional part lives in the extract, not the flavour.
Invested in
Small cheques,
absurd ambition.
I back founders whose plan sounds unreasonable when you say it out loud. Hard tech, deep science, and consumer brands built to last.
These are my own angel cheques, written personally. Orange Juice Ventures is a separate thing: it incubates and advises rather than invests.
Anomaly Bio
Synthetic biology
Turning microbes into micro-factories: sugar, water and a fermentation tank instead of extraction supply chains. Functional ingredients for nutrition, crop protection and personal care.
↗Aspera Industries
Autonomous aviation
Pilotless amphibious cargo aircraft, built in India, priced to compete with ocean freight and fast enough to make sea shipping look silly.
↗Alteon Energy
Persistent flight
Aircraft engineered to stay in the air for roughly 417 days. Infrastructure that never has to land.
↗Ally
Sculptwear
A sculptwear brand championing plant fibers, making genuinely good quality clothing for women across Asia. Comfort that doesn't cost the planet anything.
↗
Also
I mentor founders. Properly, not on a panel.
I sit with a handful of teams every month on pricing, distribution, first hires, and the co-founder conversation nobody wants to have. Book a slot on Topmate. I send what I earn there to charity, so please don't pay me for a nice chat. Come with the actual problem.
Proceeds → charity
Recognition & media
Other people, saying it better.
- ForbesBreer, 30 Under 30 Asia, Social Impact2023
- Time Out Hong KongYoung entrepreneur uses bread and beer to solve Hong Kong's food wastage issue2022
- South China Morning PostMaxim's Group and the HK start-up turning bread into beer, beer into funding2021
- Northwestern MagazineTurning Bread Into Beer2023
- Business of Design WeekSpeaker, BODW 20232023
- HKUST SustainabilitySustainability Dialogue: it is no longer an industry, it is a resource2023
- ReThink HKSpeaker, sustainability and food waste2025
- 8Shades8Shades Of… Naman Tekriwal of Breer2022
- Entrepreneur StoriesThe 24yo who turned purpose into profit and created a global beer brand2025
- Choy's PodcastLife and business in Asia2024
- Innovation Hong KongSweet spot: how Orange Juice Ventures helps start-ups2024
- YourStoryNaman Tekriwal, founder profile2023
- HKUST Entrepreneurship CenterFellow profile2024
The book
PhD Almanack
Poor Hungry Driven
Ten founders who started with nothing and turned it into something. Not the laundered version. How they made rent, who said no, and what the first hundred dollars actually came from.
10 stories of real entrepreneurs that started with zero and turned nothing into something.
- Chapters
- 10 founders
- Format
- Paperback · Kindle
- Published in
- Hong Kong
- ISBN
- 978-988-72423-0-7