Womenpreneur Asia: Recent Episodes
Krista Goon
Womenpreneur Asia is a show for women entrepreneurs in Asia to share what they know with other women who aspire to be entrepreneurs.
It's about the gritty yet inspiring stories, the little-known struggles and the much-talked about sweet success of being an Asian woman in business across Asia.
Womenpreneur Asia is created and hosted by Krista Goon who is a Malaysian entrepreneur, author and marketer. All episodes are sponsored by Redbox Studio.
Someone asked me recently, who are some of your favourite guests on the podcast and why?
What have you learned from your guests and from creating and producing this seasonal podcast since 2020?
It got me thinking so today you are in for a treat with this bonus episode.
This is the final episode of Season 6 of the Womenpreneur Asia podcast. After this, I take a quick break before Season 7 starts in October.
Most of the time, I end my season with a guest interview but this time, I decided that I'll be your guest. I'm amazed that I've produced 86 episodes so far and that yes, I am celebrating myself today.
But it's never about me. I love that you're here too. Without listeners and supporters such as you, my podcast wouldn't have gone very far at all.
Today, I am sharing with you my favourite episodes of all my six seasons.
And I shall also share with you what I’ve personally learned and taken to heart after speaking to so many Asian women entrepreneurs in Asia.
It has been an empowering journey for me as I learned to become more self-aware of my own thoughts and perspectives about entrepreneurship.
So which were my favourite episodes throughout these 6 seasons? Here are my top 15 selections.
Listen to the episode to find out why these are my favourite episodes.
Maresa Ng of Spark Group Asia, Malaysia
Dr Vimi Ramasamy of Stravik Business Consulting, Malaysia
Anja Juliah of Athena Holdings, Malaysia
See Wai Hun of Juristech, Malaysia
Zhafira Loebis of Babyloania, Indonesia
Maaike Doyer of Epic Angels, Singapore
Nancy Tran of Medifood, Vietnam
Michelle Hon of MomBoss Academy, Singapore
Titaporn Tuchinda of The Growth & Change Company, Thailand
Soline Lin of Vietnam Dental Tourism, Vietnam
Debbie Edirisinghe of Child Action Lanka, Sri Lanka
Kanyachat Lerttanapaiboon or Elle of Her Hyness, Thailand
Cha-Ly Koh of Urbanmetry, Malaysia
Deepa Jivan of J Gordhan & Co Ltd., Hong Kong
Jocelyn Pantastico of Olivia Technology Group, The Philippines
Which is YOUR favourite among all the 86 episodes of Womenpreneur Asia?
Which entrepreneur’s story made you a better entrepreneur or inspired you to think differently or work and live differently?
I’d love to hear from you. Just DM me on Instagram or send me a message.
Today's episode is brought to you by Redbox Studio.
Today’s episode is with a Singapore-based author, Winne Wong.
Winnie is an educator and researcher and has had more than 10 years of corporate experience working with start-ups and tech companies.
Her ebook launches today on Amazon, 9 June 2023. If you love books, Winnie is offering her ebook as a gift to you at US$0.99 for the first 200 readers.
In this episode, we talk about her book, her book writing process, and her findings and key learnings from her book titled “You Don’t Have to Look the Part: How East Asian Women Thrive as Entrepreneurs”.
In her book, she writes about Melanie Perkins of Canva who took 3 years to fundraise and who wrote a note to keep herself going despite the initial rejections. She also recounts the story of Vicky Tsai, the founder of Tatcha who was told she didn’t look like a CEO and was asked to step down from the business she started.
We spoke about being the role models that we aspire to follow, we also spoke about doing something despite the fears and the humiliation of failing.
Winnie took a year to write her book and even raised money through pre-orders. She has had to market the book too leveraging LinkedIn (she said Twitter and Instagram just weren’t her thing) and has found supporters for her book from people she knew and people she didn’t.
Here’s a fun fact about Winnie: her parents are Malaysian.
For the full show notes and links, go to: WomenpreneurAsia.com
This episode is brought to you by Redbox Studio.
Today's episode offers a unique and enjoyable twist. It was recorded on-site at the residence of our esteemed guest, Dato Judy Cheng Hopkins.
She is a remarkable Malaysian woman with an illustrious 36-year career at the United Nations. She is also a Penangite who splits her time between Penang (Malaysia) and the US.
She culminated her tenure as Assistant Secretary-General in charge of peace-building after conflict, working under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Prior to this role, she served as Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees, Director of the Asia Bureau and the Balkans at the World Food Programme, and dedicated ten years to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Africa.
During our conversation, Dato Judy and I delved into a lively and incredible discussion about stepping outside one's comfort zone, shattering the glass ceiling, strategic decision-making, and how to become someone worthy of sponsorship.
We also touched on her recommended book for smart women leaders while exploring how she reached the pinnacle of her career as a highly respected woman leader on the international stage.
Although Dato Judy clarifies that her advice primarily caters to women aspiring to rise within large organizations and corporations, I discovered that the leadership insights she shared are invaluable for everyone, including women entrepreneurs.
For the full show notes, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
This episode is brought to you by Redbox Studio.
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Bangalore, India, Farah Ismail.
She is the founder of Interact Consulting and calls herself a courage catalyst, coach, facilitator, and speaker.
Farah has more than 25 years of experience in the field of leadership and cross-cultural competence from her years abroad and working across countries and cultures.
She began her career in the aviation industry in the Middle East, returning to India during the IT and services boom to work in the business and learning development sectors.
Farah started her company in 2006 with the belief that everyone has the potential to make a difference and she says her role is to inspire change and realise this potential.
When they work with her, they can reimagine their business with clarity and confidence.
In this episode, we spoke about seeing gifts in the adversity that life throws at us and having a sense of adventure in our lives. Farah also encouraged women to own their voices and express themselves fully.
As a coach, Farah’s desire is to make a difference in people’s lives, continuously growing as she develops others. She spoke about choosing oneself and being courageous to set our own agenda and here’s what I like most, factor playfulness in our daily agenda.
At the heart of what we spoke about were our choices and courage.
Find more show notes about her on WomenpreneurAsia.com
If you have enjoyed today’s episode, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on your favourite podcast app. Or share this episode with a friend.
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Sharifah Sarah.
She started the business with her cousin when she was a university student studying medicine.
Today, she is the co-founder of By Sarah, a business she started with her cousin based on their love for each other and their love for the exquisite songket, a type of woven fabric in the brocade family of textiles unique to Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
By Sarah uses songket in crafting all of its bespoke accessories and clutches by their team of local artisans. Their products have been ordered by embassies and celebrities.
In this episode, she doesn’t just tell us a story of her business but also how she started the business as a university student and how she switched careers from being a doctor to working in a telecommunications company while managing her business.
If you have enjoyed today’s episode, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on your favourite podcast app.
Or share this episode with a friend.
Thank you for listening, I appreciate you and I’ll see you next Friday!
More links, information and show notes: WomenpreneurAsia.com
Do you have to know how to code in order to start an education technology business?
Or what if you’re female and not as young as some of the tech startup founders you see around you?
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Indonesia who lives in Singapore, Nino Mouton.
Nino is the founder of the education tech startup, Playbook.
She’s the ex-editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Indonesia and content strategist turned education tech warrior who wants to reinvent education for the young people of Indonesia.
Nino talks openly about her startup and the mistakes she made in the early days, forcing her to pivot. She used to panic when users found bugs in her app and she said she wished she stopped hesitating a lot more and started putting her product out to the world quicker. She talks about not knowing how to code and everyone said she needed to learn so she even took coding classes! Eventually, she realized that she wanted to be a business person, not a programmer.
Playbook is an app that offers soft skills training in micro-learning segments. Nino and her team are presently focused on the Indonesian market with micro-learning lessons served in the Indonesian language or Bahasa Indonesia.
If you’re a returning listener or a new listener and you like this podcast, do tell a friend about it. And I'd appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe too.
For more show notes and all the links to connect with my guests on the podcast, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from India, Upasna Dash who is the Founder & CEO of Jajabor Brand Consultancy.
Upasna took her love for storytelling to start her PR agency at 26 years old. She started with 10,000 rupees in 2017 which is barely RM600 or about US120 with a laptop, and her grandfather’s well-worn couch in her family home and has since grown it to a 50-person company with 40+ clients in a few short years!
Yet her motivation isn’t just about building a great PR business. It’s a lot deeper than that as you will hear in today’s episode.
We had so many things to talk about in this episode - about women in decision-making roles, about being a young entrepreneur, about wanting to do great work and helping startups get seen. She said that building a business is hard but building a business as a young woman in a city like New Delhi is even harder! I like one of her quotes - she wants her impact to walk into the room before she does and have her work speak for her. In our conversation, we touch on why women need to make decisions at the right places and be given the right platforms to grow from.
If you like her story, get more details in the show notes at the website link below.
You are listening to Season 5 of the Womenpreneur Asia podcast hosted by Krista Goon.
Find out more about the podcast, how you can get on her show and lots more at WomenpreneurAsia.com
Would you take the easy path or would you strive for something bigger than yourself even if you didn’t have to?
My guest today didn’t want to regret that she didn’t do something for herself when she could. Her friends said she could just sit back and enjoy her life - after all she had the means to do so. Having had her own career when she was younger and being inspired by the mavens of the Malaysian beauty industry, she felt it would be tragic if she didn’t try something on her own and that’s how she started two businesses in her mid-40s.
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Joyce Chua. Joyce is the Founder & CEO of Queva Beauty based in Johor, Malaysia. Queva is a business service that Joyce believes is the answer and solution to the biggest headache that beauty consultants suffer from!
Joyce has always been in the beauty and skincare industry starting from the time she worked for some of the most popular brands in Malaysia in the 1990s such as Dermalogica, The Body Shop, Xixili and more. She used to work in training, marketing, PR and sales and she admitted that she learnt a lot working under industry mavens such as Datin Mina Cheah-Fong of The Body Shop franchise in Malaysia.
Besides the salon business, she is also the founder of a skincare product - a Vitamin C serum named Fabs Skin. Her fruit-powered serum contains apple and carrot extracts to prevent hyperpigmentation problems.
For the full show notes or to nominate a guest for our upcoming season, visit Womenpreneur Asia.com
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Getting out of your comfort zone. Having the courage to go against norms and what’s expected of you. Becoming a mother at 41. Cultural explorations and coming full circle.
My guest today is Emilie Chung who co-founded Sinellia Tea with her husband in Guangdong, China.
She left France (where she had grown up, born to a Chinese dad and British mum) for China when she was 30 years old and has never looked back since.
She didn't speak Mandarin when she arrived and yet felt completely at home!
In this episode, we talk about more than just tea. We spoke about how Emilie made decisions in her life and how she bucked perceptions as a woman who is unafraid to have some adventures of her own.
She didn't let conventions dictate her life and didn't limit herself to doing what everyone did.
Despite getting a degree to be a university teacher, Emilie is more than that.
She is a coach, facilitator, university teacher and entrepreneur of her own tea business and a new mother (she had a baby at 41 when she never thought she would have one!). Today she can discuss tea and the finer aspects of tea in Mandarin!
Get the full show notes or subscribe to our newsletter at WomenpreneurAsia.com
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Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, author and book publisher from Singapore, Pearlin Siow who calls herself the Book Mama at Boss Of Me.
Her journey is a little unusual in that she started writing her bestseller book first and her business came after when more and more entrepreneurs started asking her to write their books.
Pearlin started as a journalist at Singapore Press Holdings upon graduation.
In 2000, she left to found an online barter site (which she talks about in this episode) and later, entered the corporate world when she became the business development manager for CNET Asia.
This journalist turned entrepreneur published her first book - a bestseller - in 2002 - when she was inspired by Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Work Week.
Soon after, she wrote three more books - Sleep & Get Rich, Secrets Of Asia's Most Successful Internet Gurus and Do You Have What It Takes To Be Boss.
Before long, she was getting a steady stream of clients who wanted to get their stories told and written.
Eventually, she moved into helping them publish their books by setting up her own team, working with book production experts such as designers, printers and book distributors.
Get the full show notes: WomenpreneurAsia.com
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Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, sustainability consultant, mother and former lawyer, Jay Desan.
She is the co-founder of BoomGrow, an agritech company that is growing clean greens in Malaysia.
This mother of two never expected she would be in the tech space but she did know a lot about sustainability.
Jay said that she spent many years in the UK studying and understanding corporate responsibility in human rights which she later expanded to re-imagining the corporation.
(ESG refers to Environmental, Social and Governance, the three key factors that measure the sustainability and ethical impact of a business or company.)
It made her realise how shifts and changes can happen very incrementally, starting with one person but once it’s combined with multi-stakeholders, transformation can happen.
She came back to Malaysia with the idea of making a difference but with the idea of staying in academia.
She began working in the sustainability area with companies but realized just as quickly that broken systems don’t make changes happen. Structural problems hounded her and she became frustrated at how food was grown and distributed.
Jay explains that they grow vegetables indoors in containers with technology that is set up to control variables such as water, light and humidity to maximize their output. With this setup, they are able to produce consistent yields for the supply chain.
For more show notes and website links, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
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Is it a must for businesses to keep growing? Is it peculiar if someone doesn’t want to grow her business?
Well in today’s episode, I speak to a guest who is at a crossroads of her business because she asked herself, “Do we want to keep growing and growing? Is it an inevitable path for all businesses?” What if she doesn’t want to do that and just wants to maintain what she’s doing now?
Deepa is the founder & Innovation Director for J Gordhan & Co Ltd. in Hong Kong. She manages a business that brings fun into every child and adult’s life through her arts, craft and hobby products.
They design, manufacture and deliver products to their customers who are retailers around the world “whether it's a painting, stitching or anything hobby-related.”They supply everything from stickers to paper plates, Christmas decorations to crayons, paints and more.
Since she enjoyed marketing, her father encouraged her to start her first business, marketing a product that was seen as waste from paper mills! It is no surprise then that she is inspired by her father.
In the process, she grew her one product to 2,000 SKUs while learning about the manufacturing of products including safety compliance and quality testing in China. Later, she relocated to Hong Kong.
For more show notes and information about our guest today, visit https://womenpreneurasia.com/podcast-season-05/
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Have you ever felt that you were meant to do something more? That your life is going well but there was a feeling you couldn’t shake off?
Today’s episode is with Jenny Toh. Jenny is a Certifed Life Coach and Founder of River Life Coaching in Singapore.
Jenny felt this strongly at one point in her life. At that juncture in her life, she was a mother of three with a legal career. Yet this former lawyer knew in her heart that she was meant to do something more. And that something more was to help introverted people find their place in this noisy world.
Originally from Port Dickson, Malaysia, she was a practising lawyer until she relocated to Singapore due to her marriage.
We spoke about how she got the inspiration to become a coach, the differences between coaching and counselling, how she marketed herself at the beginning and the challenges she faced as she started her business right in the midst of the pandemic!
She talks about how she marketed herself and how she managed to land coaching jobs through coaching platforms although, in the beginning, she was resistant to the idea. She also explains the differences between coaching and counselling.
Like this episode? Check out more show notes on WomenpreneurAsia.com
Womenpreneur Asia is a podcast brought to you by Redbox Studio. The seasonal show brings you a new episode weekly on Friday, GMT+8.
The podcast is the brainchild of Krista Goon, an entrepreneur, author, marketer and communicator.
Send us an audio message about this episode and we will feature your message in future episodes!
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Teh Wuan Xin.
She is the Founder & CEO of AI Talent, a business that develops child entrepreneurs.
At its core, it is an e-learning platform that provides a conducive environment for children to start their business journeys where they learn from entrepreneurs and corporate leaders through projects.
According to their website, they have partnered with more than 70 corporations and trained more than 200 coaches and 150 education centres. Hers is a B2B business where they sell their entrepreneurial programmes to education centres as part of their offerings. Currently, AI Talent has grown beyond Malaysia to offer its programmes to Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia and The Philippines.
She candidly reveals that she failed at her first startup but took the lessons to grow her present business not just in Malaysia but throughout Asia.
She also talks about the importance of having a bucket list and how the pandemic helped her business in so many ways and the leadership lessons she learnt.
To connect with her, check out the links in our show notes on the Womenpreneur Asia website.
Please rate and review if you like our podcast.
Womenpreneur Asia is brought to you by Redbox Studio. It is a seasonal podcast featuring heartwarming yet insightful interviews with Asian women entrepreneurs in Asia.
You are listening to Season 5 of the podcast. All new episodes are uploaded every Friday until the end of the season.
Welcome to Season 5 of Womenpreneur Asia and I am your host, Krista Goon. I started this podcast during the pandemic lockdown in 2020 and it's been a journey indeed! In this trailer, I talk about some exciting news and some of what I've learnt in the past 18 months.
If you are a returning listener, thank you! It means a lot to me.
If you've just found my podcast, thank you! I hope you enjoy this season (and if it intrigues you, listen to the rest of the other seasons as well).
The podcast proper starts today and for the next 14 weeks, every Friday, you'll get to listen to the stories, struggles and strategies of 14 Asian women entrepreneurs in Asia.
Please subscribe and if you like this podcast, leave me a rating or review.
See you next Friday!
Today’s episode is with a social enterprise entrepreneur from Malaysia, Yap Sook Yee. Sook Yee is the co-founder of Frienden Arts and WeCareJourney.
WeCareJourney is an association that helps parents and caregivers with children who are born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).
She started her social enterprise, FriendenArts, to sell the art and art merchandise that her two sons, Jaden and Branden, create. Treatments for the two boys are expensive and Sook Yee and her husband wanted to use their boys’ art and art products as a way to fund the treatments.
Branden was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) at the age of one. It is a rare terminal genetic condition and Sook Yee and her husband were told that their son only had one more year to live.
Sook Yee and her husband tried looking for more positive answers from doctors and everyone told them the same thing - that Branden would not live past 2 years old.
Today, Branden is 11 years old.
Sook Yee has been tireless in bringing awareness about SMA to parents and medical professionals. She and her husband advocate for the SMA community while lobbying for SMA drugs to be made available in Malaysia. She is seeing changes in the landscape and conversations about SMA. When before there seemed to be no hope, now she advises parents to never give up. Her Branden is living proof!
We talk a lot more in this episode about living and dying, gratitude, making memories, having dreams and why it's important to talk about the elephant in the room.
If you are listening to this on your favourite podcast player, please subscribe to the podcast. And if you have enjoyed my podcast, leave me a review.
This is a bonus episode and the final episode of Season 4.
I'll be back with Season 5 in September. Until then, check out the earlier seasons of the podcast.
For other information, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
Thank you for being a listener.
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Olivia Quah who is the co-founder of Asian Integrated Medical Sdn Bhd in Malaysia.
Her business specialises in elderly care products and interestingly she began her business because of her own ageing parents.
Her business also complements her husband’s as he is a medical doctor and a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner.
Olivia is also expanding her business although her main focus is on her ecommerce website.
She has many plans in store for her elderly care products and services and she reveals in this episode how she has been successful so far in her product-driven business.
Her 20 years of working experience in business development, trade and investment promotion and operations gave her insights and a ready network when she began her own business.
Her previous career contacts became useful when it was time for her to start Asian Integrated Medical Sdn Bhd, a licensed medical supply company specialising in elderly care products such as wheelchairs, hospital beds, oxygen concentrators and more.
In addition, they run and manage their own retail outlet, clinic, Chinese medicine clinic and nursing home and sell their products online at their own website.
For more information, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Uyanga Batzogs who is the Founder and Executive Director of Quality Life from Mongolia.
Uyanga started the NGO when she discovered a 2015 survey of over 500 elderly citizens in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia revealing the need for senior social and medical care.
Through Proliance LLC (the medical equipment distribution business that she runs), she founded one of Mongolia’s first senior recreation providers, Quality Life.
Quality Life Club is a social-based daycare that provides seniors with the opportunity to engage with peers, and their community, and exercise their bodies and minds.
Uyanga’s company Proliance LLC and Quality Life NGO’s board are passionate about pioneering senior care service in Mongolia. In 2017, they started collaborating to support seniors to have meaningful jobs and share their extensive knowledge and experience with other businesses and community members.
When she was a teenager, Mongolia changed from being a communist country to a democracy. Prior to the change, everyone including Uyanga thought that her life and career were mapped out. She would get good grades and a job would be waiting for her when she got out of school.
With the change in the country, almost overnight she was left clueless about the next step in her life which was from having a guaranteed job to having nothing!
This is Uyanga's story as a woman entrepreneur and non-profit founder.
For more information about this episode, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Thailand, Kanyachat Lerttanapaiboon who is fondly known as Elle.
She is the co-founder & CEO of Her Hyness, a skincare brand that focuses on ingredients that are safe and good for your skin.
Elle had worked for well-known cosmetic and skincare brands in Singapore and China and despite being one of the rising stars in the corporate world, she left corporate to start her clean beauty skincare company in Thailand.
If you’re a marketing person like me, you’d love this episode. Elle and I spoke about how she decided to focus on the Thai market despite her years of experience in China, how she pilot-tested her first product and how she grew her homegrown brand to rank in the top 20 beauty brands in Thailand next to global brands, a milestone she is truly proud of.
Elle says, “Never give up. Today is hard. Tomorrow will be worse but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine."
Get more information about Elle and her business: WomenpreneurAsia.com
Today’s episode is with Jocelyn Pantastico who is the Co-founder & CEO of Olivia Technology Group based in The Phillippines.
Jocs as she is more fondly known has spent most of her life in the corporate world, with many of those years as an expat in Indonesia.
In 2018, she returned to The Philippines to start her tech startup, Olivia, a milestone she is most proud of.
Her software frees companies from tedious manual data capture so that they can focus on real work. Olivia processes receipts and invoices, translating them into reports and digital assets in seconds.
But it really isn’t about the receipts as we get deeper into this interview. While today's episode is about software that keeps your money in check, it is also about the bigger concept of wealth, money management and investing.
We spoke about how her world now is distinctly different from her corporate days. She talks about the startup lessons she learned as she built her startup and how she had to change the ways she thought about putting products out into the market.
She also talks about how her software is creating more value for accountants rather than taking away their jobs. And in that process, she uncovered the reason people were leaving accountancy firms.
We also discussed why women don’t talk about money as openly as men going back into her own past and her realization that she needed to be open about money with her daughter. She revealed some really smart strategies for teaching her daughter how to invest, ultimately giving her a headstart with money and how that has transformed her own daughter’s relationship with money and wealth.
This episode is brought to you by Redbox Studio.
For more information about Jocelyn, visit: https://womenpreneurasia.com/podcast-season-04/
Please subscribe if you've enjoyed this podcast. Thank you.
Today’s episode is with Evi Mariani, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Project Multatuli based in Indonesia.
Evi was the former managing editor at The Jakarta Post. Her collaborative projects won the 2020 Public Service Journalism Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia and the 2020 Tasrif Award from the AJI.
Evi and 3 other fellow journalists started Project Multatuli, a media organisation dedicated to carrying out the ideals of public journalism by giving a voice to the voiceless, spotlighting the marginalized, and reporting on the underreported. Multatuli comes from Latin meaning “I have suffered much.”
In this episode, we talk about how a crisis led Evi to start something that truly spoke to her heart - social justice. She said she was never raised to be political - all she wanted was to travel and see the world as a journalist.
As an Indonesian Chinese with a Catholic upbringing, social journalism wasn’t the path she was supposed to take. However, her first taste of political activism began in earnest when she entered Gajah Mada University which opened her eyes to diversity, pluralism, gender equality and so much more.
Evi started her media organization during the pandemic which also pushed her to return to her Chinese business roots so to speak. She had to figure out the best model for her media business because she didn’t care much for the advertising model that most media defaulted to.
As the only woman among the 4 founders of Project Multatuli, she is known as Ibu Dir. Evi is a woman who called herself an underachiever but today, she is the one who is pushing for greater change through the medium she knows best.
Today’s conversation is a little deeper and more thoughtful but I know that Evi and Project Multatuli are exactly what we need to change the game.
For links and other info, go to womenpreneurasia.com
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Today’s episode is with Michelle Hon who is the founder of MomBoss Academy based in Singapore.
Most of my podcast guests are fun but Michelle is another level of fun.
We talked about the concept of false beliefs about working hard and how income is tied to effort or is it? We spoke about being paid for results, not the 100 things that we do. It’s about the 80 20 principle.
Michelle learnt this when she had to recover from dengue. At the same time, she was also pregnant. She worked fewer hours than before and yet, her revenue grew bigger than the years before. It flipped all the beliefs about working and hustling hard.
For Michelle, it’s about the effort that gets people to results and that is not always tied to how hard you work. Beliefs impact actions. And when you change your actions, you change your outcomes.
We also went back into Michelle’s past as a child when she was given a book called Mind Over Matter for a birthday party that didn’t happen. You have to listen to that part of the story that involved a difficult childhood and growing up having very little money.
We talked about how Michelle’s tough childhood actually helped her get to who she is today. I love her strength when she said "If I start something new and it doesn’t work out what do I have to lose? I just go back to square one and that’s not too bad."
You’ll love today’s episode. Let’s get into it!
For more interesting information, visit: https://womenpreneurasia.com/podcast-season-04/
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Today’s episode is with May Sresthaporn who is the founder of MSHAPPYDIET and PLANTOGENIC in Thailand.
One is about the community while the other is about products but both are about health, wellness and balanced living.
She said she enjoyed the food a bit too much when she studied in the US but realized that the sugary foods and carbs took a terrible toll on her health!
When she came home to Thailand, May started blogging about herself and her own stories of regaining good health through healthier eating and lifestyle. Some 10 years later, this passion bloomed into two health-based businesses.
We talked about the dilemmas of entrepreneurship, what success means and how do work and life fit into everything that we want to do as entrepreneurs.
Plus have you taken our survey yet? It’s completely anonymous and it takes just 2 minutes to fill. Tell me what you think of my podcast. Just go to https://tinyurl.com/asianpodcast
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Evon Heng who is the Principal & Chief Operating Officer of PropNex Malaysia, a real estate agency with 1,000 negotiators.
It wasn’t always this way and in the early days when she started the business, she found it a struggle to grow after a certain point.
Evon grew up in Klang, Selangor and she had always wanted to become a businesswoman because of her parents.
After getting her real estate negotiator licence, she began her career in selling real estate.
In 2018, Evon and her partner became the master licensor of PropNex Malaysia, enabling Malaysian real estate negotiators to become even more successful based on the systems of its mother company - Propnex Singapore.
For more information about Evon, check out womenpreneurasia.com
Her father, who was a property negotiator, was her main inspiration to join the real estate industry. While working at her first job, she enrolled on a part-time diploma course in estate agency.
This week I speak with Lalita Raman who is the CEO and founder of Transitions Intl Ltd based out of Hong Kong where she facilitates and coaches in the areas of leadership and communications.
This Mumbai native started her business in 2012 after spending 20+ years working in various investment banking organisations in Hong Kong.
She talks about how she had to adapt to different roles and build new skills as she made that shift from employment to entrepreneurship.
In her coaching work, she helps executives do the same - finding in themselves the clarity and confidence to manage the change that comes with career shifts.
For show notes and more, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Today’s episode is with Dr Wendy Liew who is the founder of The Image Creator, a corporate training business based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
She was a delight to interview - we had so much fun and laughter and even tears - as she was open enough to talk about her shortcomings, the fear of losing face and being a failure.
Success means a lot to her because she grew up in a small town and in an era and an environment where boys were favoured over girls. Her mother was her biggest supporter even borrowing money to put her through university and often had to deal with Wendy’s impulsive career changes.
She learnt many hard lessons and struggled with her own pride and perfectionism and wished she had been less of a lone ranger and more of a leader when she first founded her business.
When she was chasing after what she wanted, she couldn’t reach her goals but when she let go and learned to take helpful advice and opened up, her business began to change and soar.
Then the pandemic hit and again her business earnings hit the ground and now she is transforming her business for the next phase.
For other information and show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Linda Lo is this week's guest and she is the founder and director of Ambon Boenda, a food business involved in baking and retailing Indonesian layer cakes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Linda was born in Indonesia and currently lives in Malaysia.
Known as spekkeok or kue lapis in Indonesian, the layer cake originally was a Dutch cake. Spekkoek was made by the wives of Dutch administrators in Batavia during the colonial period and later, the Indonesians put their own unique twist to the cake by adding spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, mace, and anise. It has a unique taste and flavour and Linda lets you in on what makes a great layer cake and what you should look for if you're buying one!
Linda started baking from home in 2015 - in the back lane behind her home - and not long after decided to take a leap of faith to start her own retail store.
This is her story of how her intense love for the cake of her homeland made her learn under five bakers so that she could share her Indonesian cakes with discerning customers in Kuala Lumpur and beyond!
For show notes and more, check out womenpreneurasia.com
From disaster risk management to closet consultant and now founder of a fashion tech startup, Eri Kobayashi wants us to rethink how we wear our clothes and at the same time, wants to give women convenient access to other image and styling consultants.
Eri’s story starts in the most unlikely of places - Singapore. That’s where she was living for 10 years before she returned to Japan to start her fashion app business.
She was already a stylist and closet consultant but she wanted to build a platform that connects women to their stylists and continue to create confidence for women who didn't know how to put together lookbooks of their own.
For more show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Episode 1 of Season 4 is about Jomie Casas from The Philippines who helps other entrepreneurs manage their companies remotely.
As the founder of Just Rent a COO, Jomie and her team help clients run their businesses on autopilot so that they can fall in love with their life (and business!) again.
Jomie decided to live the life that she wanted because she started questioning assumptions about life, family, travel and more.
She didn’t start out running a remote business - in fact, she ran an e-commerce business in The Philippines before selling the entire business and jumping on a plane headed to Singapore!
For more information about Jomie, check out WomenpreneurAsia.com
Here's a birthday gift to myself and to you too, yes, today is my birthday - I created a short trailer for Season 4 because I felt that this season is going to be super exciting.
If you're new to my podcast, please subscribe or check out the website too. If you're a returning listener, thank you for always being with me as I uncover more Asian women entrepreneurs in Asia and their stories.
I am continually humbled by everyone who has been on my podcast and it seemed apt that I launch my new season with a trailer of what's to come. Enjoy!
In this bonus episode that caps Season 3, I am speaking to Dianne Lee, a Malaysian-born woman who lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.
Dianne is an executive director with Kitchell Corporation, a construction engineering company.
During the global lockdown last year, she decided to write a book that described her own journey as an Asian woman and how she believes Asian women would do well to leverage stereotypes to their advantage!
Dianne writes about embracing challenges through what she calls “turning your yin into your yang”.
She is proud of her journey “from a small town (Klang) Malaysia to Los Angeles, America and how I am paying it forward for all women in a Caucasian and highly male-dominated construction industry.”
In this episode, we talk about how she climbed the corporate ladder, the values she lives by, her mom's favourite advice and how Dianne intends to help other women succeed as well.
More show notes at womenpreneurasia.com
In this episode, I am speaking to Debbie Choa, co-founder and chief operating officer of Projek57, a social enterprise in Malaysia that focuses on unity and youth.
Projek57 began when its founders were dismayed that racial polarisation and religious tension kept rising in Malaysia and believed they needed to do something and enable Malaysians to stand together as one.
Debbie and her husband, Collin started Projek57 with Collin’s long-time friend, Syed Sadiq Albar with the hope of bringing unity through youth engagement while giving back to the community.
Working with corporations and youth, Projek57 has channelled more than RM400,000 to help the underprivileged in Malaysia through undertaking workshops and projects that foster unity in Malaysian youth.
How did a lawyer, wife and mom like Debbie become a social enterprise founder? This is her story.
Krista's note: It's apt that this episode airs today. The past week has been incredibly trying for many Malaysians who lost their homes and for some their lives during the flooding. Malaysians leveraged Twitter to ask for help and rallied supplies and resources in this time of need whether it was cooking food, donating supplies or even cleaning up mud-filled houses. What a fantastic demonstration of our true Malaysian spirit despite the tragic circumstances! I for one am so heartened by the Malaysian spirit - the very same spirit that Debbie and Projek57 is championing!
More show notes at womenpreneurasia.com
In this week’s episode, I am speaking to Michelle and Melissa Sin of SKB Shutters Corporation Berhad from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The business had its roots in Penang but since Michelle and Melissa’s father took over, they relocated to Kuala Lumpur as urbanisation in the 80s saw a growing need for their steel products.
Michelle and Melissa had worked for KPMG before joining their parents in the manufacturing business. At SKB, Melissa heads sales and marketing while Michelle manages the operations.
In this episode, Michelle and Melissa talk about:
- What keeps this family business charging forward despite the uncertainties and changes in the business environment if they were music, what kinds of music they would be
- How their 5-year age difference doesn’t seem to matter now that they’re in the business together
- Their favourite books and why they each prefer a certain genre
- How fear can be a great motivator and demotivator
- What their most worthwhile investment was in the past 2 years
- The guilt that Michelle feels because she is a working mother and what Melissa says about that
- The unique advantages of being family in a business (and the drawbacks)
For more show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com
In this episode, I spoke to Tanya Rolfe and Christine Yu, two out of the three founders of Sophia.
Sophia is a learning platform made for women who want to learn about money and investing and how to put their money towards venture capital funding and angel investment funding to support other women entrepreneurs.
Sophia was born out of the founders' frustrations experienced in the world of investing towards female entrepreneurs.
Tanya and Christine (and another co-founder, Nicole) want to create a refreshingly new dialogue for women funders as well as women founders and create the right kind of impact from the clean and green perspective.
Tanya’s in Singapore while Christine is in Hong Kong. Both were equally hilarious yet firm and ferocious in their desire to change the conversation about women, money and investing.
From organic raspberries to standup comedy, these two ladies will surprise you with their experiences as women who do talk about money!
Check out the full show notes (and their best quotable quotes) at womenpreneurasia.com
This episode is all about Malaysian entrepreneur, Fiona Marcus Raja who is based in Kuching, Sarawak.
She started five businesses in five years since she came back to Sarawak after being away with her family and caring for her son who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a type of cancer that happens to young children.
She is the founder and managing director of Borneo International Exhibition Sdn Bhd, an events management business that helps other businesses organise large-scale events and expos in Borneo and beyond. She is also the managing partner of Orion Social Media (Sarawak) Sdn Bhd.
This is a woman who became a mum at 21 and at one point even drove a lorry while pregnant as she had to manage events for her clients!
Fiona is tough, strong-willed, pragmatic and persistent. She learnt about crisis management and decision-making from taking care of her son and the years of being in and out of hospitals.
Due to her son's condition, Fiona also started The Royce Foundation (named after her son) as a primary source for cancer information and resources in Sarawak.
She also started and founded 11Ridgeway Kuching, a community-driven event venue in Kuching designed for people to meet, greet, work and network. 11Ridgeway is also the birthplace of The Royce Foundation.
For more information, check out womenpreneurasia.com
Penny Choong of Malaysia is this week's guest. She is the founder of Penny Essentials, a business that helps people enjoy being healthy.
Yet years ago, she was suffering from such severe migraine attacks that she couldn’t even get out of bed!
Her story is quite unique in that she was focused on teaching financial education when she came back from the Middle East.
Yet life sometimes throws us curve balls and she came to a realization that she herself needed to be well first. She couldn’t help others if she herself wasn’t feeling absolutely her best.
Thanks to solving her own migraine attacks, she has improved her health to the extent that “my health is better now in my 40s compared to my 20s”.
Penny is proud of her bounce back to wellness and now endeavours to share what she knows with her customers and her community of 40,000 people.
For show notes and more, visit womenpreneurasia.com
This episode is about Padmaja Vaswani from India who manages 3 businesses focusing on learning and development, organisational development in addition to diversity and inclusion.
Padmaja is the Founder & CEO of Siksha Group, which offers learning and development for companies across India.
She is also the CEO of NEWS Navigation that specializes in executive coaching and organizational transformation solutions.
She is also the co-founder of WeMantra which enables individuals and organizations to create a diverse and inclusive ecosystem and unleash growth.
Padmaja also established the Siksha Mehak Foundation in 2006, a trust that supports children with cancer, orphaned autistic children and children from the lower economic strata.
She didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur - she was an athlete since young and she thought she had her life mapped out until a sports injury forced her to rethink what she wanted to do with her life.
For show notes and more details, visit womenpreneurasia.com
This episode is about Thai entrepreneur, Chalita Hongsakul.
Chalita is the Managing Director of Wakingbee Corporation based in Bangkok, Thailand.
She doesn’t call herself a fitness freak but came to start a fitness and activewear clothing brand after quitting as a management consultant.
It was a desire to get healthy that put her on the entrepreneurial track. While trying to get to the gym, she realised all the available brands she looked at didn’t quite fit her need for something fun, feminine and active. That's how Wakingbee was born!
In this episode:
- What she was more concerned about and it wasn’t failure
- What surprised her the most about approaching manufacturers for her line of activewear
- How she went from consultant to an entrepreneur all because she couldn’t find the right activewear for herself
- What she does to keep her brand fresh and exciting even after 6 years in the Thai market
- What she found most intriguing when she started her business and it had nothing to do with numbers or KPIs
- How she convinced manufacturers to work with them despite having no track record in the clothing industry
For more show notes and information, visit womenpreneurasia.com
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This episode of Season 3 is with Saliza Abdullah, the Managing Director & CEO, BG Capital Holdings Group of Companies in Malaysia.
Saliza manages a 100% woman-owned security services business - one which belonged to her late mother.
The original business offered physical guarding and security services. Since taking over, Saliza has expanded the scope of business to include training and surveillance.
In this episode, we talk about:
- What it's like running a fully woman-owned business with her late mother when she got back from the US
- What it's like now with her niece as the upcoming third generation
- Restructuring the business into what it is today - revenues are now in the 8 figures
- Other businesses and diversification strategies that she embarked upon
- The real success markers in business
- Pushing the women’s agenda through her business and how she does it
- The creation of a family constitution as the basis of the business moving forward
- Why women must never be shy about talking about their businesses
- Why women are her best allies in business and the importance of the right networks
- How the pandemic helped her get better
For show notes and more, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Titaporn Tuchinda is this week's guest and she is an executive coach, entrepreneur and investor in Thailand with more than one business!
She is the Managing Director of The Growth and Change Co., Ltd, Thailand and founder and board member of Brighton College International School just outside of Bangkok.
She has also conceptualised and set up two boutique hotels in Chiangmai from scratch!
Titaporn is also an executive coach with Aberkyn.
These businesses seem unrelated on the surface but as we went deeper into the conversation, we realized that each of these businesses taps into Titaporn’s love for learning and education.
A mother of three teenagers, Titaporn came into the business after 12 years in the corporate world of McKinsey. As a management consultant, she had no idea what she was going to do when she quit her job except that she wanted to go into business.
In this episode, she spoke about:
- Why having 3 scenarios for a business is crucial
- What she is no longer afraid of, having learnt this lesson during this covid pandemic
- A pivotal time of her life - one that changed her life completely
- Her big regret until today (and it has nothing to do with her businesses)
- The crucial 24 months in the startup phase of any business
- How decisions are no longer escalated up to her
- Where she intends to go into the next phase of her entrepreneurial life
- Setting herself a crazy goal each year
- The secret sauce enabling her to manage all her businesses as well as her family without losing her head
- Why you don’t need to go to university to learn about business
For other interesting nuggets about Titaporn, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Jayce Tham co-founded CreativesAtWork with her sister, Fanny, in 2012 and the two sisters couldn’t be more different!
Jayce spent years in the corporate world while Fanny was in the creative industry.
The two Singaporean sisters created a pool and network of freelancers in Singapore and across the region to help corporate companies with everything media-related and creative-related such as photography to graphic design, from advertisements to short films.
Unlike other platforms which offer freelancer matchmaking, CreativesAtWork's value is in the project management so that the creatives can be at their creative best!
Jayce and Fanny saw that the market was ripe for a new generation of freelancers. Freelancing was becoming a more viable option for many especially the millennials.
In this episode, Jayce and I speak about how she started and the challenges of running a media agency. She spoke about growing beyond offering project management as their business matures.
We spoke about:
- What she wished she had known 9 years ago when she first started her media agency
- How she and her sister navigate that tricky, slippery slope of being siblings who are in business together
- The importance of working for others if your dream is to become your own boss eventually
- How she looked at clients’ work in the early years versus how she looks at the work now
- Her most important piece of advice for herself (and for you) and she said she wished she learnt this sooner and saved herself all the pain and frustration
- The unpopular, contrarian opinion of dealing with difficult clients
For show notes and more, visit womenpreneurasia.com
This week I speak to Vietnamese startup founder, Laura Phan, the founder & CEO of iZi Community.
iZi Community is an online gamification and AI-based education platform made for learners who need snack-sized learning.
Interestingly, Laura is a non-tech founder where she leads her team of programmers in connecting learners and content creators in Vietnam.
But this is not her first business. She started her first business at 21 with a team of 30 people because she wanted to prove a point.
In this episode, Laura talks about:
- How she defines success and its counterpart, failure
- How she started her business at 21 and what she learned from that first venture of hers
- What she learnt from her failure in the early days of her business
- How she decided to get back into the business when she saw an opportunity open up during the pandemic lockdown
- Her own feelings about education prompted her to rethink education
- How she didn’t focus on the money when she started and why this is important
- What’s important to know for non-tech women startup founders like her
- How she validated her edu-tech idea (and what we can learn from this process)
- The habits that she practices daily to ensure she is always on the path she wants for herself
More details and show notes at womenpreneurasia.com
Following your dream.
After working for a few years in London, Helen came home to Penang, Malaysia to work in the family business.
Yet, her heart was always in the arts. She described how she would visit museums and art galleries in London and found that she was always joyful in these places.
And that was how she realised she had to pursue her love for the arts and started her design firm, Blanc Designs.
Helen loves to incorporate art as 3D forms for homes and offices rather than have art within a frame and within the confines of the museum or gallery.
She tests and tries unconventional ways of displaying and appreciating art while creating pieces that are functional. To her, art is life and life is art.
For more information about Helen, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Welcome to Season 3! We kick off our third season with Yuka Imanishi who is the founder and CEO of CURIO Japan Inc.
Yuka's business started as a B2C business and soon after, became also a B2B business and now she even has a third business due to the pandemic!
Due to her innate curiosity for the world at large, her business is all about fostering intercultural relations between international students with the local Japanese.
It started with a simple premise - tutoring services. Later, she also saw a need to help international students who graduated and wanted to stay in Japan to look for work. This became another business.
Because of the pandemic, her first two businesses almost came to a standstill and she had to quickly find a way to still keep her Japanese customers connected to her international students.
Thus began the online intercultural sessions, tapping again into the resources she had built up over the years!
For more about Yuka (and her background before she became an entrepreneur), get the full article at womenpreneurasia.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating and review!
For the final episode of Season 2, I spoke to Amita Nandy, CEO and Founder of Tact World, Malaysia. Her story has a twist at the end.
TACT World began in 1991 when she had to leave full-time work to take care of her family and for 31 years, Amita has been training, coaching and facilitating.
She still works with corporate clients but she also now focuses her energy on women. Amita has a passion for working with women using women circles and retreats, incorporating storytelling and coaching and group therapy to help women overcome self-limiting beliefs.
In this episode, Amita talks about:
- The first book she authored had nothing to do with training or development surprisingly
- Why Mrs Gandhi’s assassination in India also affected her and changed her path in life
- Why she is more willing to embrace that which is uncommon right now in her life
- Being a one-woman business when she started although her passion was only in designing training curriculum
- Why she checked herself when her son said that he didn’t want to go to college and more
I hope you have enjoyed Season 2. I will be back with an even more stellar line-up of women CEOs and women founders in Season 3. Catch my personal message at the end of this episode. I'll see you in Season 3 which launches on 1 October.
More details: womenpreneurasia.com
This episode is about a Singaporean mumpreneur, Eve Phua who is the founder of Believe Beauty Academy, a beauty and wellness business where she helps women look their best - using products by Mary Kay.
She was top in her personal sales for the Mary Kay Singapore Sales Director Category last year despite it being a challenging year due to the pandemic. She also leads her own team of beauty consultants.
But more than that, she spoke about how she saw herself transforming from a timid person to someone who now uses live videos to educate her customers.
She also talks about using personality tests and tools to help her manage her team of beauty consultants and she also debunks some of the myths associated with direct selling.
She also admitted that running a business helped her become a better mother instead of always hovering around her children like a helicopter mum. She has given them the space to be themselves and to be independent.
More at womenpreneurasia.com
In this episode, I spoke to Michelle Yeo who is the Co-Founder and General Manager of Dandy Modern Food in Penang, Malaysia.
She has two outlets in Penang with a third planned for Kuala Lumpur.
Dandy is an all-day casual eatery, bakery and café serving a massive 150 items on their menu. These contemporary Mediterranean dishes include pastries and desserts.
Michelle who is from Kuching, Sarawak and her husband Jamal who is from Lebanon were already running a security systems business when they had the idea to start a food business despite no experience in F&B.
Michelle says it was her late father, who ran a textile business in Kuching, that encouraged her in business. Her mum was worried though.
From learning how to make the perfect cup of caramel macchiato to ensuring customers keep coming back, Michelle has never stopped learning about becoming a better restauranteur.
She shares a lot more gems in this episode so listen to find out more.
For more, visit womenpreneurasia.com
In today’s episode, I spoke to Boonsiri Somchit Ong who is the co-founder and chief conceptualist of Xtrategize Technologies Sdn Bhd based in Penang, Malaysia.
Boonsiri is of Malaysian Thai-Chinese descent and is well known in the multinational corporation circle where she had spent more than 30 years before she left to join her husband, Tony, in the business.
In her previous corporate role, Boonsiri was a finance and operations professional leading a global team that delivered business accounting services that supported a multinational’s entire global entities.
Her turning point was a TEDx Talk that she gave in 2015 that spoke about failure for the first time ever in front of her family and people who knew her as a successful corporate high flyer.
In this interview, you will hear Boonsiri’s enthusiasm for life, work and family. She is determined, strong and capable and yet isn’t afraid to reveal that she too is human with her own shortcomings.
Find out more about Boonsiri at womenpreneurasia.com
This week, I spoke to Radha Mohan Durbha who is the co-founder and director of Kereses Consulting India Private Ltd, India.
She started her business when she was 41 and in looking back, she wished she had started much earlier!
Kereses Consulting India Private Ltd is a HR consulting business based in Bangalore, India that Radha started with her friend.
As a HR recruiter, Radha is responsible for the planning, budgeting and operations of recruitment and training, and engages with organizations to facilitate a connection between potential employers and employees.
While she helps employers in Bangalore find the right talents to power and run their businesses, she is also in her own way pushing the women’s agenda.
Radha who considers herself a tough cookie and a feminist said she would try to inject a gender perspective into the hiring process and open more doors for women in the labour force in Bangalore.
Some factories, she said, never even had a women’s bathroom on their premises because hiring women was simply not in the equation!
These were some of the HR-related yet women-related matters that Radha is trying to push for in her business.
She may not run a social enterprise but it shows that a woman in business can influence how other women are hired and employed.
In this episode, she talks about:
- The differences between running one’s own business versus working in the corporate world
- What she says to employers who insist that the jobs are meant for men
- Her zero billings when the pandemic hit India and the world and hiring wasn’t even possible
- That one single quality that differentiates a great recruiter from a good one
- How she has to chase after candidates and ensure they get to the interviews and the prep work she does before they even get to the interview
- Why LinkedIn is a great place for people like her
- What she does when she’s faced with a difficult decision
Find additional information on womenpreneurasia.com
Jaklin Juanis is the founder of Professional Advancements Resources based in Malaysia.
Jaklin was born and bred in Kota Belud in rural Sabah, East Malaysia. Her village didn’t have electricity and as a child she studied by candlelight.
In this interview, she spoke about how she kept on moving and having the momentum to get out of her challenging situation, and being smart about the resources she had around her.
She has certainly done well for herself. Since 2008, as a corporate trainer, Jaklin has trained more than 40 organizations, 35,000 participants and logged in 4200 hours of corporate training and 800 hours of 1-on-1 coaching and mentoring.
Quite inspiring for someone who admitted that as a young graduate, she had this intense fear of public speaking!
Jaklin had worked in Shell and Lafarge, two large multinational companies for years before she decided to start her own business.
Based on her experience, she had a vision of what her business would be like but her business didn’t exactly turn out that way.
Listen to this episode for the full story.
Get more information about Jaklin at womenpreneurasia.com
In this episode, I spoke to Malaysian entrepreneur Shamala Hinrichsen.
Shamala is the founder of Hanai, a social enterprise that empowers women to take charge of their health.
Her first app, Hanai Jiwa Ibu, targeted at rural Malaysia provides women with access to information about maternal, mental health and domestic violence in addition to a complete doctor’s directory and information on COVID-19.
Inspired by her own grandmother, Shamala who now lives in Germany with her husband and two children, calls herself an Ipoh girl at heart.
She worked in three continents - North America, Asia an Europe - and trained as a scientist and in her own words, had a comfortable life and career.
Her pivotal turn came when she spent four months in India.
Shamala says, “A large part of the world is actually still rural and women never know what to do in an emergency, never know that it is an emergency and that they need to do something right there.”
She adds, “We want to be in that position to give every woman the ability to make decisions on her own and get help.”
In this episode, Shamala talks about:
- Her time crossing north and south India, opening up her eyes to the issues plaguing rural women
- How she was moved by a death of a woman which pushed her to start with Borneo
- Why starting a health tech company wasn’t just about coding the apps
- and lots more.
For more information about her, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
In this episode, I spoke to Cha-Ly Koh who is the CEO & founder of Urbanmetry Sdn Bhd in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Urbanmetry is a data company that cleans and analyses large amounts of city data, through its proprietary algorithms with the purpose of using data to better inform, plan and develop sustainable urban dwellings.
With offices in Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi, Urbanmetry collaborated with ThinkCity to publish a book in 2016 titled The Secret Atlas of Greater Kuala Lumpur which offers insights to various industries through the lens of big data.
For a woman in a largely male-dominated industry, Cha-Ly takes it in her stride, citing, “It’s not a bed of roses and not impossible either.”
In this episode, you will hear some fascinating yet honest truths from Cha-Ly such as:
- What happened when she started with her “naive” idea and that didn’t stick even after she threw so much money at it!
- How she decided to transform her business from a B2C to a B2B business (and how the realization came to her and surprisingly, it didn’t involve asking for feedback)
- How she stopped “marketing” and where all if not most of her clients come from now
- How her business started to grow after she did one thing that she should’ve done from the beginning
- The real truth about listening to the market
- Her toughest challenges as a woman CEO who is also the single founder of her company
For more information about Cha-Ly and some quotable quotes that you will love, visit WomenpreneurAsia.com
In this episode, I spoke to Shadaitul Intan, the director of Profound Learning Solutions Sdn Bhd, a training consultancy based in Malaysia.
Intan, as she is fondly known, grew up in a small town of Batu Gajah, Perak but was encouraged by her father to be who she wanted to be. She admitted she once drove a Ferrari that wasn't hers and she even set up a daycare centre prior to setting up this training consultancy business.
She was 33 and a single mother of 2 daughters when she started her business.
She went from being a bank executive to a unit trust consultant and finally found her calling in being an entrepreneur and trusted trainer for corporations and companies.
What’s in this episode:
- What this single mother of two did to plan her exit from the corporate world after realizing finance wasn’t her cup of tea
- How she learnt business skills she knew she needed but didn’t yet have
- What she realised about the world when she became an entrepreneur (and how she learnt through heartbreaking mistakes how to separate business from friendship)
- The two factors that helped her succeed in the training consultancy business and much more
Find out more about her at WomenpreneurAsia.com
In this episode, I am speaking to Sophie Ha Tu Nguyen from Vietnam who is the co-founder and CEO of Skabella, a children's clothing business.
Sophie's business was hit particularly hard by the pandemic as hers was a retail business, dependent on foot traffic in the mall.
What was supposed to be the worst possible year for her turned out to be a year of possibilities and renewed hope.
She had to make some decisions but by making these decisions, she grew a new business that was particularly suited to her experience and expertise in the fashion industry. She combined what she knew with what she could do for women who were looking for help.
She also chose the route of collaboration, partnering with a friend by sharing resources which in turn allowed her more freedom of time!
Sophie's entrepreneurial pivoting is truly an insightful story of resilience, of never giving up and of making the most of what one has.
For links and show notes, visit womenpreneurasia.com
Episode 3 is where I speak to Susan Chee who is the founder and director of Criteria & Connections in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Her business helps companies create memorable events, launches and conferences.
Some of her noteworthy events include:
- Managing the itinerary of the richest man in the world who was visiting Malaysia but she didn't even have time to gawk at him or request a photograph! (In case you didn't know, the man in question was Bill Gates.)
- Organising a 600-delegate conference in Macao and much of the stress made her sleep the entire day once the event was over. It was so significant that Hong Kong's TVB did a reality TV type of show having their TV crew trail Susan when she was organising this massive event. in Macao.
- Managing 80s pop icon Rick Astley when he arrived in Malaysia and she suddenly realised he wasn't very tall at all. (She was literally staring down at him.)
The business sounds glamorous when you're in front as a spectator. But when you're behind-the-scenes, managing multiple schedules, clients, sub-contractors, vendors and teams, it is complex artistry at its best.
It was a delight talking to Susan despite the fact that the pandemic had hit the events management business hard.
In this episode, Susan talks about:
- How she managed and "processed" 1000+ participants for the biggest Windows 2000 launch in Malaysia back then
- What happened when she got tired of everything
- How her growing billings changed her thinking from being a freelancer to being a boss
- How she handled prospecting
- How she became smart about her pitches and proposals
- Her "eye roll" list and the occupational hazards and the "sickness" that plagues most event planners and conference organisers
Find out more about Susan at womenpreneurasia.com
Episode 2 of Season 2 features Rowena Morais who is a Malaysian entrepreneur with a strong communication slant to her work.
Rowena is the editor, writer, publisher and programme director at Vertical Distinct with offices in Malaysia and Australia.
She started her entrepreneurial journey in the most unusual way - she got herself a working visa to New Zealand which later landed her in Australia which turned into work for a startup!
That startup experience during the heady days of the dotcom boom eventually turned into the dot-com bust but that didn't stop Rowena from coming back to Malaysia to launch her business, armed with what she had seen and done in Australia.
In this episode, Rowena talks about:
- How she took her startup experience to help her start her conference business in Malaysia for HR professionals
- How that led her to her publishing business even though she had no magazine publishing experience!
- How her business evolved into more private executive briefings and exclusive HR breakfast roundtables that were the talk of the town (which was creative but terrifying as she was the pioneer of such a concept)
- How she made safe spaces for authentic HR discussions with senior HR professionals
- How her internal marker shifted each time she undertakes a role she'd rather not take as she admits she is more of a behind-the-scenes person
Find out more about her favourite books and more in our show notes at womenpreneurasia.com
Welcome to Season 2 of Womenpreneur Asia!
For the next 13 weeks, we will feature 13 incredibly inspiring yet down-to-earth women in business across Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and India. A new episode airs every Friday.
In this first episode of Season 2, I am excited to present to you a smart and successful Malaysian entrepreneur, See Wai Hun.
Wai Hun is the CEO and co-founder of Juristech, a Malaysian fintech company that provides banking solutions.
Since acquiring iMoney in 2020, she is also the CEO of iMoney, a personal finance company that empowers consumers so that they can make intelligent money decisions.
She was amazing to talk to as she is down-to-earth with a curious yet sharp mind, possessing a practical humility about herself, her background and the businesses that she is running.
Despite her fame and success in the fintech world, Wai Hun happily considers motherhood as her biggest accomplishment and milestone.
In this interview, Wai Hun openly shared her heartfelt thoughts and experiences that were fascinating as well as thoroughly inspiring from the challenges of growing a business to how she started her business during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 (the reason was totally surprising!).
This is a bonus episode where Anushia Kandasamy (of Episode 4) decides to reverse the roles and ask me questions!
She did a brilliant job as she made me talk about what mattered to me the most and how I ended up doing what I do now. I also had many a-ha moments during the course of our interview as I realised how stories have been a major influence in my life even from a young age.
I spoke about being uncomfortable, bored, angry and curious and these emotions catapulted me into starting life-changing projects that impact the community and solve problems. In this episode, I also spoke about the importance of raising leaders while being fulfilled and happy at what I do.
Season 2 launches on 16 April so stay tuned!
This is the episode where I will tell you more about who I am and why I am doing what I am doing right now.
I never wanted to be an entrepreneur; all I wanted to do was to do well in my career. I never thought I was a risk-taker.
I've been truly blessed and grateful for the amazing opportunities that have come my way.
I've co-founded the business I am and I really enjoy helping our clients.
I've also co-founded a women entrepreneur organisation in Penang, Malaysia where we grow and nurture women in businesses and provide a network of support and resources.
And then I started this podcast. Not on a whim but something I had wanted to do for a long time.
Enjoy this story of mine!
Anja Juliah Abu Bakar is the founder of Athena Holdings Sdn Bhd (formerly Blubear Holdings Sdn Bhd), a Malaysian social enterprise that sells washable cloth pads and other earth-friendly products.
Her journey as an entrepreneur has many twists and turns, some hilarious and others quite heartbreaking.
But Anja never gives up. She is one determined woman. She was so determined that she decided to go to Paris to pitch someone she didn't even know.
In this interview, she also talks about what it means to be a social enterprise and what shifted the balance for her in her entrepreneurial life.
The idea behind Anja's business is about reducing period poverty issues while educating women and girls on safe and earth-friendly menstrual hygiene practices.
Having one's period shouldn't be the reason why rural girls drop out of school and lose out on education. This is where Anja's products come in to enable girls to reach their full potential.
Initially, her business arose out of a curiosity to earn an income but eventually, she made a mission out of the business although she could not sew!
Rina is a Malaysian entrepreneur who started out as a computer scientist and the classic example of a woman who is able to spot opportunities and turn them into success.
Presently, she is an angel investor with investments in businesses across Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. She also serves on several business advisory boards, NGOs & universities. She is also on the board of MATRADE.
In this episode, she talks about how she grew up in Rifle Range, Penang and learnt entrepreneurship when she sold nasi lemak around the neighbourhood. She also helped with her mother's hairdressing business in their home which doubled up as a hair salon!
She has come a long way since then and her story is truly one of grit and hard work. Enjoy this episode!
Ooi Lay Pheng is the CEO of Berjayapak Sdn Bhd in Penang, Malaysia.
She is in the business of providing wood packaging solutions such as pallets, crates and boxes to multinational corporations that need to ship and send their precious cargo all over the world.
This is a multi-million ringgit industry but it is also a rough-and-tough business. The wood packaging industry is a challenging industry as sustainable timber resources need to be managed while competitors are aplenty. The factory is usually hot, noisy and dusty. In fact, Lay Pheng has experienced going into forests and jungles to visit timber suppliers and check on the wood supplies!
Lay Pheng returned to helm the family business not because she wanted to but because her father asked her to. She couldn’t refuse as this family business was truly built on sweat, grit and tears.
She put aside her own plans which included her own business to step up and lead the manufacturing business.
The business has since expanded into Vietnam with more countries to come. In the last five years that she has come onboard, the company has gone on to win multiple awards for quality and innovation with the most recent one being Asia’s Leading SME Award in 2020.
Dr Vimaleswari Ramasamy is the CEO and founder of STRAVIK Business Consulting based in Penang, Malaysia.
STRAVIK Business Consulting offers business startup consulting to multinational companies keen to establish a strong presence and foothold in Malaysia as well as business optimisation consulting to organisations and Small Medium Enterprises looking to increase revenue.
Together with her team, she provides strategic consultation with strong analytical and operational expertise, leveraging today's technology including artificial intelligence systems.
But she wasn’t always an entrepreneur. In fact, she started out as an engineer who loved challenges and problem-solving.
She kept climbing up the career ladder in the multinational corporation that she worked for and even chose, after a while, to change tracks and venture into human resources.
Her last role before she left to start STRAVIK was a milestone to be proud of. She was the first Malaysian female managing director for a UK-based multinational company for five years, growing the company to a 600-strong workforce.
In this interview, she talks about why she left the comfortable corporate world, a world she has known well since the day she started working more than two decades ago.
Ann Wong is the co-founder of the Penan Women Project in Sarawak, Malaysia.
It is an initiative that helps the women of the Penan tribe in Sarawak to earn regular incomes and ensures the traditional art of weaving is kept alive.
The Penan women are expert weavers despite having no formal education.
Penan Women Project buys the handmade bags from the Penan women and markets the bags and totes at community fairs and bazaars in Miri, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang. Some volunteers also organise sale days at their homes to market these bags - bags that come with a story.
Ann used to study and work in the US for more than a decade before settling back in Kuching, Sarawak.
She uses her art and design knowledge to help the Penan women through the Penan Women Project. This is her story but it is also a story of empowering the Penan women of Sarawak.
Marlienna Suwito who is based in Jakarta, Indonesia started her business of rearing swiftlets for their valuable nests in 2006.
These nests are carefully harvested and made into edible health products and even skincare for the Indonesian market as well as overseas markets.
It isn't just a business like any other; Marlienna is tapping into her business acumen and network as a means to help her help the community she feels strongly about - underprivileged children - while providing jobs to women in need.
Nina Othman didn’t start out wanting to found a social enterprise.
Grow The Goose happened because her sons came to her one day and asked for roller shoes.
She didn't give her boys the money. Nina encouraged her boys to put on their thinking caps and be creative in looking for solutions.
Her one idea for her boys turned into the quirkily named Grow The Goose, a social enterprise that empowers kids to be problem-solvers and solution-finders. Her business teaches children how to be financially-savvy while nurturing their entrepreneurial skills.
Nina also openly talks about the reasons her 13 business ventures failed in the past and what she learnt from those experiences. She used her past to help her redefine her future and the future of her social enterprise!
Indonesian entrepreneur, Zhafira Loebis, started Babyloania with her husband Arlo Erdaka Temenggung in 2014 when they were pregnant with their first child.
She was making a list of baby items and equipment she wanted to buy for her firstborn with her husband when they realized how expensive everything was.
This problem prompted them to look into starting Babyloania which began as a baby equipment rental business serving other parents in areas such as Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang dan Bekasi.
Babyloania has been quite the success story in Indonesia; Zhafira has been featured on CNN and CNBC Indonesia for not just her inventiveness but also her openness to share what she knows with other parents and businesses.
Interestingly, Zhafira and her husband have also started collaborating with their competitors - some 126 of them.
She has since started two other businesses as a result of starting Babyloania and she shares some of her best marketing and hiring strategies in this power-packed episode!
Anushia Kandasamy's path to where she is now is a little unconventional. She started out as a management consultant with McKinsey and worked for 11 years before starting her own consulting business.
At every twist and turn, she has courageously taken the next step even though she didn’t really know what was in store. Anushia admits she has been very lucky throughout her career and business life.
From being an exchange student in Japan to backpacking overland from Germany to Malaysia, Anushia is adventurous and optimistic and yet has her feet planted firmly on the ground!
She believes that doing something for humanity and saving the world has always been on her agenda and business is one of the means to get her there.
What happens when you're a fashion retailer with 7 stores and then you're forced to close due to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Norhani Pacasum of Ziya Inc. had to re-evaluate her options and face her deepest fears as the Philippine government ordered a lockdown in the city of Manila.
She felt she was, for the first time ever, in a truly dark place. She was fearful but she decided she was going to find the silver lining in this period of uncertainty.
In this episode, Norhani speaks frankly about teamwork, resilience and the need to quickly adapt even though she and her team were incredibly afraid.
Are you working so hard that you forget who you are and what you wanted?
In this episode, Maresa Ng of The Spark Group Asia talks candidly about her coaching business. She began with a lot of passion and enthusiasm but she was pushing herself so hard and wanting to succeed so badly that she forgot how to live life.
Insecurity, exhaustion, frustration - you name it, she had it.
Maresa's business was running her to the ground and she came to a point where she had to make a huge decision about her business.
What is Womenpreneur Asia all about? Here's a quick overview of what you can expect from this brand new podcast for women entrepreneurs in Asia from Krista Goon. All episodes of Womenpreneur Asia are sponsored by Redbox Studio. Look out for new episodes every Friday for the next 13 weeks.
Hawaii is where this all happened.
This is the introduction episode for Womenpreneur Asia and how I faced up to all my fears.
I had wanted to start a podcast for the longest time but it was just a lot of wishing and wondering. But Hawaii and the East-West Center (and all the good folks from mentors, mentees and peers) in July 2019 changed my life. Enjoy this episode!