RIC Founder Gerald Yap on Building a Consulting Firm Around Projects and Financing

In January 2023, Real Inbound Consulting founder Gerald Yap shared his perspective on the consulting market, RIC's growth journey and the principles behind the firm's approach to client work.

The discussion reflected an early version of what has since become central to RIC's positioning: helping companies not only plan growth and transformation projects, but also secure the financing needed to execute them.

Why RIC Combined Project Advisory With Financing

Gerald described RIC's positioning as a combination of two capabilities.

First, helping companies plan projects relating to transformation and expansion, including new product development, overseas expansion, digitalisation and automation.

Second, helping clients secure external financing to execute those projects through government grants, loans or other forms of capital.

The rationale was practical: many companies know they need to transform or grow, but financing constraints can prevent good projects from moving forward.

A Focus on Projects That Help Companies Grow

The fireside chat highlighted four recurring project areas in RIC's work at the time: developing and commercialising new technology, expanding overseas, digitalising operations and automating production lines.

These areas share a common theme.

They are not grant applications in themselves. They are business projects that may require external financing to become commercially viable or easier to execute.

That distinction remains important because funding should support the business objective, rather than become the objective.

 

Client Service as a Long-Term Relationship

Gerald also discussed the importance of responsiveness, understanding the client's business, charging fairly and seeing commitments through.

One example involved a client whose approved grant support was initially lower than expected. Rather than treating the approval as the end of the engagement, the RIC team prepared an appeal and continued engaging the funding agency until the support level was revised.

The broader principle was that advisory work should create meaningful value beyond completing an application.

How RIC Grew

Gerald traced RIC's origins back to his university years, when he began helping traditional businesses as a one-person consultancy.

RIC continued as a side business while he worked in the technology sector, before growing to the point where he eventually moved into the consultancy full time.

As the client base expanded, the firm built a team across business development, client operations, project management, technical writing, finance and HR.

The interview also captured RIC's early interest in expanding beyond Singapore into markets such as Hong Kong and Australia.

The Thinking Behind the Name Real Inbound

The discussion also explained the origin of the company's name.

'Real Inbound' was chosen to reflect the inbound methodology: building meaningful and lasting relationships by helping customers achieve their goals.

For RIC, the idea was that long-term client value and trust should matter more than extracting maximum value from a single engagement.

From Grant Applications to Funding Architecture

The 2023 fireside chat provides a useful snapshot of the thinking behind RIC's evolution.

The underlying idea remains straightforward: start with the company's growth or transformation objective, understand the project properly, then determine how external financing can support execution.

That approach is increasingly reflected in RIC's focus on funding architecture, agency fit, project structuring, implementation readiness and claims considerations.

Speak With RIC

Planning a growth, innovation, transformation or market-entry project?

Share your company profile, project objective, estimated budget and implementation timeline.

RIC can help assess the appropriate funding pathway and how the project should be structured.