Kim Ha-yeon, CEO of Nanum Vitamin, is a young entrepreneur who confronted the reality of children at risk of missing meals while doing educational volunteer work. CEO Kim, connecting her warm heart for children with technology, is presenting a new welfare paradigm to Korea's donation market, which reaches 16 trillion won. ESG.ONL met Nanum Vitamin CEO Kim Ha-yeon to hear about the innovative business model and social impact she has unfolded, and her bold vision toward an ESG unicorn.
CEO Kim Ha-yeon, on leave one semester before graduating from Seoul National University's Business Administration department, founded the social venture "Nanum Vitamin" in her early twenties and began operating "Nabiyam," an innovative meal-sharing platform for children at risk of missing meals. Having done educational volunteer work at local children's centers and libraries for more than six years since her high-school days, she came to hear in detail, through deep emotional communion with children, the inner circumstances and problems of those in welfare blind spots. Rather than merely worrying about their difficulties as an individual-level problem, CEO Kim Ha-yeon connected them to an idea for "solving a social problem."
[Nanum Vitamin CEO Kim Ha-yeon © ESG.ONL]
The "Nabiyam" App That Goes Beyond the Limits of the Existing Welfare System
"Even if technology advances and resources increase, it's meaningless if they aren't properly delivered to those who need them."
Children at risk of missing meals are in many cases hard-pressed to access information on welfare services. Even when they do access welfare benefits, it can be hard to use the service freely because of self-consciousness or an uncomfortable feeling. Such feelings cannot be known until one is in their position. CEO Kim realized that, although there are many well-intentioned shops and good owners here and there, there was no platform that could connect these shops with children at risk of missing meals. That is when the first business idea came to her — to connect shops and children directly.
["Nabiyam," the meal-sharing platform of the social venture "Nanum Vitamin" © Nanum Vitamin]
"The existing welfare system goes through intermediary support organizations, but in our app the user is at the center."
Born on the basis of that idea, Nanum Vitamin's flagship service "Nabiyam" is a donation-matching service that overcame "decoupling," a limit of the existing welfare system in which donors and recipients are hard to match. Rather than the form of the existing welfare system, in which benefits are received only for designated items, it lets the party using the service choose "what to eat" through mobile meal vouchers.
*Decoupling refers to a situation in which the provided institution or service is separated from actual activity.
It also supports securing the transparency of welfare-service operation in administration and finance by providing donors with data-based reports through the app. Transparent information disclosure is made possible by Nabiyam's real-time dashboard. Reports based on general data and behavioral data have the advantage that partner companies or institutions can immediately confirm the effect of their social contribution and their brand favorability. Companies and local governments satisfied with Nabiyam's data often carry out projects again. Of the 30-odd domestic companies and local governments — including SK E&S, POSCO, the Korea Association of Health Promotion, and Woowa Brothers — more than 85% of partners chose to re-collaborate with Nanum Vitamin. CEO Kim emphasized that such digital-welfare innovation is the core of a new welfare model created by the public and private sectors together.
[Various collaboration cases of "Nanum Vitamin" © Nanum Vitamin]
Stigma-Free Connection Through User-Centered Welfare
"Our customers should become subjects who 'choose and enjoy,' not 'recipients of benefits.' Instead of the 'stigma' of receiving a donation, we want to give the experience of naturally 'using' a rightful meal entitlement."
Korea's children at risk of missing meals number about 280,000. In addition, there are still many who experience difficulty with a single meal among youth preparing for self-reliance, elderly people in tiny sublet rooms, and the unemployed young population. Nabiyam seeks to expand the meaning by having these people, beyond simply receiving benefit-based support, be provided a service that raises their self-esteem. First, it changed the term for the support target to "user." It is the result of listening to the voices of those who have experienced receiving donations. It also designed a UX that enables two-way communication so that cheering messages and thank-you messages can be exchanged. Users connected to some 60,000 small businesses nationwide gathered in this donation app, which allows real-time two-way communication, can now build a usage experience free of psychological burden amid natural communication as they use meal vouchers.
[The participation menu for the general public on "Nabiyam" © Nanum Vitamin]
The Sustainable Social-Impact Structure Nanum Vitamin Creates
"At the boundary of social welfare and innovation, I pondered a structure that can be self-sustaining without external support."
Nanum Vitamin is realizing transparency in welfare-service operation through a "structure in which 100% of donations are transparently delivered to users." One cannot help but wonder how it covers company operating costs. CEO Kim explained that Nanum Vitamin is building a profit structure by contributing to local-community sales through public-institution collaboration and external donations and discount linkages. She also said that while the connection between donors and users on Nabiyam is done transparently, the company built a model in which multifaceted profit can arise through platform brokerage fees, campaign-operation costs, advertising, and so on. The brokerage fee is receiving a portion of sales in the form of a donation through the connection with the merchant the user uses; the shop likes it because users come through the app and sales rise, and it feels great meaning in being able to realize social value while making a small per-transaction donation. Leading the economic value created through linkage with the local community and small businesses — beyond the frame of welfare-service users and donors — into sustainable social impact: this is, in effect, Nanum Vitamin's ESG management model.
A Next-Generation Leader's Responsibility and the Ambition of an ESG Unicorn
"We will become a company that maximizes social value with technology and data, without losing the essence of donation and welfare."
CEO Kim Ha-yeon has also won the "Presidential Award, Grand Prize at the grand championship of the Public Data Utilization Startup Competition" and the "Republic of Korea Talent Award" conferred by the Minister of Education. With such awards and four technology patents, she is recognized for her expertise in the social-services field and for extraordinary achievement in technological capability and innovation. Not long ago, she also had the honor of being named — as the only Korean — to SisaJournal's "100 Next-Generation Leaders of 2024" and "Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2025." "Winning an award or being selected doesn't change anything. But using these awards as an occasion, I have to strive to grow more professionally together with stakeholders," she conveyed her calm aspiration.
[The various award plaques Nanum Vitamin CEO Kim Ha-yeon has received © ESG.ONL]
What is CEO Kim's goal for 2025, having achieved various results in only three years? CEO Kim first wants to ponder platform scalability more. Innovative projects — such as creating an algorithm for automatic connection between food companies and donation recipients, and digital-transformation collaboration with domestic marts — are already under way. She is also seeking overseas expansion, beyond the domestic donation market, to Southeast Asia and other places where welfare-delivery systems are not yet built up.
CEO Kim Ha-yeon and Nanum Vitamin are creating a new donation-and-welfare ecosystem combining technology, data, and a warm heart. Under the philosophy that "donation is connection," they aim for a platform where the socially disadvantaged, local communities, and companies grow together. The keynote of the world she dreams of is "connection where everyone is respected, a society where everyone grows." Finally, CEO Kim resolved, "I will prove firsthand that, even as a social venture, one can develop in a sustainable and scalable direction through system-based innovation." We cheer that the confidence of CEO Kim Ha-yeon — who fulfills social responsibility by combining forward-thinking awareness and technology — leads to a bright future for our society's ESG social-contribution field and sustainable management.
by Editor L