Happy International Women's Day!
Our very first issue!
Happy International Women’s Day! On this special day, I would like to showcase and celebrate three impressive female founders who have founded and led a tech business to greater heights.
#1 Nidhi Gupta, cofounder of Portcast (AI/ Shipping)
Do you know that 90% of world trade moves in 18 million containers globally with average 5 days delay, leading to million of dollars in costs, thousands of hours of manual work and unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions?
Nidhi Gupta founded Portcast (https://portcast.io) to make supply chains more efficient and ensure timely delivery. She has ten years of experience in the logistics industry and was inspired by how tech could transform a traditional and manual shipping industry for the better.
Despite the severe COVID situation in 2020, she grew the company by 30x on $0 marketing dollars, by leveraging the product and market readiness.
Running a startup is hard enough and what makes it even more challenging for Nidhi is that, she is also a mother of a young toddler.
She has raised a seed round with Wavemaker Partners as the lead in late 2018. They are now in the process of raising our next round and looking for VCs with experience in helping scale enterprise SaaS startups and corporate funds in supply chain and logistics.
#2 Serene Cai, cofounder of Speedoc (Medtech)
Serene Cai who cofounded Speedoc since 2017 is an amazing female founder.
Armed with the mission to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to patients, Speedoc.com/sg provides quality medical care experience to every person anytime, anywhere in Singapore.
Under her leadership, Speedoc has grown to become one of the industry leader in the digital health space. She grew the company 400% in the last year alone, from a 12-man team to a 72-man team across 3 countries within a 6-month period, counting more than 33,000 patient visits under their belt.
Speedoc has also successfully raised series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, joined by fellow investors SMRT Ventures, Decacorn Capital and Global Grand Leisure.
Serene shares that it isn't easy being a female entrepreneur and what makes it more challenging is that the medical industry is also one that is dominated by males. To prove herself, she has to work extremely hard, day and night, for years.
#3 Shilpa Jain, cofounder of Talkyourheartout.com (Mental Health)
Shilpa Jain is the cofounder of Your Heart Out (Talk Your Heart Out (TYHO), app.talkyourheartout.com). It is the only online counselling and coaching platform in Singapore that provides easy access to highly qualified local therapists and coaches, at fixed, affordable rates.
Shilpa was living and working in Australia for about 8 years and she noticed the stark difference in societal attitudes towards mental health and the support available between Australia and Singapore. It was also difficult for her to gain access to therapy when she was back in Singapore, inspiring her to found an online counselling platform.
What's impressive is that TYHO has within two months of starting operations. Since May 2020, Shilpa has grown the company from 5 to 12 professionals, acquired close to 300 individual clients (who have used multiple sessions on average) and have more than 15 B2B clients. TYHO has also grown beyond the shores of Singapore, providing services to clients in other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Australasia. She is currently fundraising.
If you wish to reach out to any of the founders above, please email elise@asiastartupnetwork.com. The Asia Startup Network is set up to help purpose driven early stage Asia based tech startups grow quickly and expand into USA, Europe, Australia, China and Japan and amplify their positive impact in the world.