The Tao Family and the New Heritage Group (NHG) have had a long history of investments that have profound positive impact on the communities involved from Nanjing to Suzhou and ASEAN countries. In the 1960s, C.F. Tao, the founder of NHG and his elder brother S.P. Tao operated a trading business in Myanmar that supplied fair-priced rice from Myanmar to Sri Lanka at the time of a failed rice harvest there. In 1978, the two brothers again teamed up to embark on the Jinling Hotel project in Nanjing which was the first 5 star-hotel project in the City, one of the earliest such hotels in China at its “opening up” after the Cultural Revolution and which also was the catalyst for the major urban renewal and reconstruction of Nanjing city centre. In 1991, C.F. Tao was again the pioneer developer in the city of Suzhou, 70km outside of Shanghai. The project, Suzhou Garden Villa, helped bring much needed foreign investment into the city of Suzhou and in turn attracted many other foreign investors and industrialists to that city, including the Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park, so that by 2005 the city’s GDP ranked 5th amongst cities in China through the hard work of everyone involved with the city. New Heritage was also the sponsor in 1996 and 1997 of two of the earliest international Urban Planning and Design workshops in Suzhou to study the preservation and revitalisation of the historical Chinese city which would eventually influence the movement to retain cultural and historical legacies in ancient cities such as Suzhou. New Heritage continued its building revolution, expanding as the pioneer developer further and further into the townships and villages around Suzhou to bring a higher quality of inexpensive housing to first time home buyers with amenities.
Today we realise that social impact investments should ideally measure their impacts on society and be much more specific on their attained benefits. However we also recognise that like us in the past, many companies and projects are highly beneficial to their communities and non-shareholder stakeholders who do not yet have measurements or targets in this area. We are supporters of both types although we do encourage more social impact measurement for the future.
We look forward to engaging with social impact investment opportunities, particularly in education, environmental waste management, aged living, science and technology. We look for strong, passionate teams who are anywhere on the journey from start-up to pre-IPO.