Much of the existing workplace gender equality narrative has been reactive, focused on identifying systemic weaknesses and misconceptions and then finding solutions to overcome them.

This International Women’s Day, I want to focus on a proactive way of introducing the conversation into the workplace and promote some ideas of what we can do as professionals to create a stronger foundation for women empowerment and success.

Homogeneity vs. diversity

Throughout my 15 years as a finance professional, I have noticed that a key ingredient for success, whether as a company or in any individual, is to encourage diversity, in particular diversity of thought. The past has proven how homogeneity of thought, or groupthink, can have detrimental consequences to business practices.

One example would be the banking practices that led to the economic crisis of 2008. Homogeneity can become an increasing challenge when companies grow to certain sizes and adopt more standard operating procedures as well as decision-making processes. It may even become one of the reasons why more established companies find it harder to challenge the status quo and innovate.

Groupthink often happens unconsciously. As humans, we are creatures of habit and inclined to form routines. It may appear more comfortable to approach a project in the same way as usual, instead of listening to someone challenging the standard practice. By not listening to the challenge, however, we miss the opportunity to identify new solutions and innovations.

In my opinion, most environments would benefit from having less homogeneity of opinions. One of the ways to achieve this is to encourage a more diverse workforce and ensure a more balanced representation of people during the decision-making process.

Ultimately, everyone should aim to be open to different perspectives and to be challenged by people who might think, sound or look different from ourselves.

So, how then does diversity contribute to women empowerment? Encouraging diversity of people, opinions and choices are, in fact, the key ingredients to empowering women at work.

Also Read: Meet the 6 fintech startups graduating from F10’s inaugural accelerator programme

What diversity in the workplace looks like

As the key drivers of the company’s vision, leaders have to place importance on diversity and proactively address the challenges that come with homogeneity of thought.

This means creating an environment that values diversity of experiences and backgrounds and sees the occasional challenge as a value-add to the decision-making process. We need to become better at identifying and controlling our own biases.

During recruitment processes, for example, it is essential to put in place a framework with clear criteria that reduces the risk of introducing personal bias and at the extreme, discrimination. Similar guidelines focusing on the merit and experience of an individual should be in place during the training, promotion and salary review processes.

In day-to-day work, leaders, mentors and supervisors should not expect subordinates to automatically execute what they had in mind, but instead, give them opportunities to challenge, and then take ownership of their projects, by giving them room to come up with ideas and solutions.

If certain barriers or perceived barriers continue to exist within a company, there is a need to openly address them and think about what can be done to remove those barriers. For example, if women are unable to progress beyond a certain level in a given company, management needs to identify the reasons for the lack of women in leadership roles and implement processes to develop and promote women into positions they deserve based on their merit.

In my past experiences in investment banking, venture capital and the payments sectors, I have been very lucky to have worked with amazing individuals. They encouraged me to speak up, question things, own certain aspects and gave me the space to prove myself. This has given me the confidence to develop my own career path, culminating in my present role in Southeast Asia-based payments firm 2C2P where I lead our M&A and venture arm, and manage investor relations.

Despite statistics showing that women tend to be under-represented in the financial services industry, I am happy to have seen more and more women coming up through the ranks in recent years and I am optimistic that opportunities for women in this space will continue to grow.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Singapore gets new maritime startup fund, ZASH buys Lomotif, why Indonesia’s fintech scene is thriving

Encouraging diversity from a young age

Just like how habits start forming at a young age, it is important to encourage diversity of thought from the start. And the best way to do it is to have more people share their stories, become role models in various fields, and encourage the younger generation to read up and research the areas that they are interested in.

The only way to counter preconceived stereotypes about what women can or cannot do in certain fields is to provide contrarian narratives. I encourage all of you, whether in a personal or business setting, to share your stories about successes and struggles alike.

We can all learn from each other and your story might end up motivating someone younger to explore a certain industry or career path.

Besides storytelling and information-sharing, mentorship programmes are a great way to connect professionals with the younger generation. Mentors have played a huge role in my career, in terms of creating role models as well as giving me insights and learnings from their own experiences, which have helped me to navigate many challenging situations.

Apart from demonstrating to the younger generation that it is possible to enter a diverse variety of fields, we should also encourage them to figure out what they really want to do in life, what they are good at and what energises them. If it happens to be fintech, then go into fintech.

If it’s engineering, then do that. Hearing from a wide variety of stories and having the freedom to choose one’s career is essential, but it is also important to first have the interest and passion, and not to forget qualifications.

This International Women’s Day, let us create an environment where there is diversity in choices, thoughts and people, and encourage everyone to be the best they can be in whatever field they are in.

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East Ventures, one of Indonesia’s largest VC firms, is set to take charge of EV Growth as part of a restructuring in the co-GP structure of the latter.

EV Growth, which focuses on providing capital for growth-stage startups across Southeast Asia, was originally formed in 2018 as a joint venture between East Ventures, SMDV and ZVC (formerly Yahoo Japan Capital).

The Singapore-based firm was originally led by three partners – Willson Cuaca from East Ventures, Roderick Purwana from SMDV, and Shinichiro Hori from ZVC.

As part of the reshuffle, Purwana will be appointed as a Managing Partner of East Ventures while David Tendian will be appointed as the Operating Partner at SMDV. Hori will remain on the EV Growth investment committee.

Meanwhile, EV Growth team members and part of the SMDV team will join East Ventures. Once completed, the Indonesian firm claims it will command the largest venture team in Southeast Asia, with over 60 staff members and eight partners.

Also Read: Meet the VCs: In conversation with East Ventures’ first female partner Melisa Irene

EV Growth’s Fund I (with a corpus of US$250 million) has invested in notable growth-stage companies including Ruangguru, Waresix, and Shopback, among others. The firm claims it has generated an internal rate of return (IRR) of 27 per cent as of last year with an early exit through the sale of MokaPOS to gojek.

“We have strong synergy between the EV Growth and East Ventures ecosystem. This new arrangement will strengthen efficiency and enable us to run with more boldness and speed. We will be able to assist entrepreneurs in a better, smarter and wiser manner – fully stacked to unlock their potential,” noted Cuaca, Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures.

Purwana shared similar sentiments. “After the initial collaboration, we felt we were ready to take the relationship even further. The alignment would allow our founders for more unencumbered access in the combined ecosystem, capabilities and network,“ he added.

“We believe that this transformation will further strengthen our presence and accelerate our investments in Southeast Asia. Z Holdings will commit more into the Southeast Asia market and leverage the group assets as part of the SoftBank Group,” closed Hori, Managing Partner of ZVC.

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Image Credit: East Ventures

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Mesh Bio, a Singaporean health-tech startup, has raised US$1.8 million in a seed funding round, led by deep-tech investor Elev8.vc and SEEDS capital.

Wealth management firm Citrine Capital as well as Singaporean VC firm Tael Partners also joined the round. 

Mesh Bio intends to use the capital to accelerate the rollout of its solution, DARA, for healthcare providers in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The funds will also support the startup’s clinical partnerships and collaborations.

The two-year-old company was started by Andrew Wu (former COO of Clearbridge Biomedics) Arsen Batagov ( former bioinformatics scientist) and Melvin Heng ( physician and hospital administrator) when they noticed the rise in chronic diseases, making patient management increasingly complex and challenging.

Their solution helps specialists, general practitioners and doctors lacking specialist training in endocrinology predict diseases before it even occurs.

Furthermore, it also manages challenging patient cases by drawing in-patient data and translating it into actionable insight.

Also Read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

Mesh Bio claims to have helped healthcare providers in Singapore increase report generation by up to five times with decreased human error. 

Its solution has also delivered over 60 per cent operational savings and 99 per cent in revenue growth.

Aditya Mathur, founder of Elev8.vc said: “Rapidly ageing populations across the world deserve far better healthcare. Mesh Bio’s predictive analytics offers a clinically validated technology to detect and support chronic diseases before they even occur.”

According to Deloitte, predictive analytics will play a central role in improving health and reducing mortality rates across age groups.

Digital health technologies have increasingly grabbed investor attention ever since the onset of the pandemic. 

In 2020, the Asia Pacific digital health ecosystem closed US$6.14 billion in VC funding, 25 per cent higher than 2019. The top-funded cluster was medical diagnostics. 

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Image Credit: Mesh Bio

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M Capital Management, a newly-established VC firm based in Singapore, announced today that it has made the final close of its maiden fund, M Venture Partners, at US$30.85 million.

The names of the LPs have not been disclosed.

The fund intends to invest in about 40 ventures — mainly in the seed and pre-Series A stages — focused on technology-enabled B2B or B2B2C business models. The average initial cheque size will be about US$500,000.

Also Read: Founders should be able to back up their ideas with sales; Golden Gates newly-appointed Principal Jeffrey Chua

“We intend to remain sector-agnostic in this maiden fund. However, we are extremely focused on investing in seasoned talent. We seek to partner with entrepreneurs who have pedigree professional experience and strong academic backgrounds,” said co-founder Mayank Parekh.

“While it may sound simplistic, at this early stage, it’s all about ensuring the talent has the mental acuity, maturity and resilience to build to last,” he added.

MVP was founded by Parekh, a former investor and management consultant, along with Joachim Ackermann, former managing director of Google Asia Pacific. Other key team members include Dr. Tanuja Rajah who joins from Entrepreneur First, and Chethana Ellepola, previously Research Director at Acquity Stockbrokers.

Since inception, the VC firm has made 11 investments in total. Its prominent investment is 3D Metal Forge, which recently got listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Other investees are health coaching startup Naluri, AI-enabled credit company Impact Credit Solutions, and health-tech startup Cipher Cancer Clinics.

“While maintaining Southeast Asian, broader regional and global aspirations, a majority of our portfolio companies will be Singapore headquartered. Singapore presents a fabulous venture ecosystem and support network for our entrepreneurs and an ideal springboard to launch innovative and disruptive technology start-ups across multiple markets,” said Ackermann.

Singapore’s early-stage VC investment space is buzzing of late even as the world is ye to come out of the COVID-19 crisis. On Tuesday, Niklas Holck, former Chairman of Nordic Eye Venture Capital, announced the launch of Tradeworks.vc. The boutique VC firm targets early-growth startups and scaleups at the seed to Series A funding stages, mainly in the logistics-tech segment.

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Image Credit: M Capital

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Singapore-based transport and engineering group, Goldbell Corporation which recently snapped up local electric car-sharing startup BlueSG, has been monitoring the autonomous mobility segment for a long time and will enter the space at an opportune time, according to Kelvin Tay, Managing Director of its Future Mobility unit.

The company sees immediate opportunity in the ‘controlled environment autonomy’, wherein autonomous vehicles will be put in a controlled environment to reduce the possibility of accidents.

“An example of controlled environment autonomy is a warehouse, wherein autonomous forklifts are used to move items from one place to another. Here, the aisles in the warehouse are fixed and so there is the least possibility for accidents,” Tay explained.

Also Read: BlueSG: Is electric car sharing really cheaper than other alternatives like Grab and Uber?

Then, there is ‘open-world autonomy’, which is far more challenging than controlled environment autonomy. Goldbell, however, has no immediate plans to venture into this space because of ‘edge cases’. Edge cases refer to cases where autonomous vehicles don’t know how to react in situations with which they are not familiar.

“For instance, an autonomous car may consider a simple plastic blag lying on the road as an obstacle. If it comes close to this object, it may send an emergency alert and apply a sudden break. To stop it from doing so, you have to tell the vehicle/programme it in a way that it doesn’t stop at minor obstacles. Because when it applies a sudden break, the vehicle coming from behind is likely to collide with it, causing an accident,” he elaborated.

Another concern with open-world autonomy is a liability. For instance, there are concerns about who will be held liable if an autonomous vehicle is involved in an accident on a public road.

“When these problems are solved, it may be a good time for us to get involved. So, we would like to take a watch-and-wait approach before entering this space,” he said.

Having said that, Goldbell already runs an autonomous forklift company, called XSquare. According to Tay, this firm has already deployed three units of autonomous forklifts at its customers’ locations and they have been running for 12 months.

Tay also revealed that there were many companies under its consideration for acquisition but it went ahead with BlueSG because the latter has already established a strong brand in Singapore and is well-known. Plus, its model (car-sharing between point A to point B) is suitable for Singapore.

Also Read: Tesla to scale its team in Singapore with 11 new hires

Goldbell wants to take BlueSG overseas and has already shortlisted a few cities in Asia Pacific. He, however, declined to share the cities.

“We will take BlueSG to smart cities which share similar characteristics of Singapore so that it will be much more suitable for us to apply our technology. If the characteristics are so different from Singapore, then it might require too much localisation,” he said.

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Image Credit: Goldbell

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