At Asia's Top Tech Event, Women Entrepreneurs Rise Into The Spotlight

Two months before the 2017 RISE Conference, a premiere tech event in Asia that was held in Hong Kong this week, Nicole Denholder and Atin Batra were inspired to hold a women-focused pitch competition. But not just any pitch competition -- one that allowed multiple founders to engage with investors and grow their businesses through those conversations.

“Everyone has been to a pitch competition where a couple of judges choose who pitched best,” Denholder and Batra said via email. “We wanted to create something different, something more valuable for the entrepreneurs. That's why we decided to create a format where the founders could begin a productive conversation with investors, who have committed to invest.”

Denholder is the founder of Next Chapter Ventures, a Hong Kong-based crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs, and Batra is an associate at Q Venture Partners and the founder of Dock@Work. Along with WHub, Next Chapter and Dock@Work co-hosted Pitch Like a Girl as a satellite of RISE on Wednesday evening. Of the 57 applications they received, the hosts selected 10 startups to pitch investors in a “Shark Tank”-style platform.

The teams hailed from Hong Kong, New Zealand, Indonesia and Malaysia, and came from industries as varied as fintech, health and wellness, education and fashion and beauty. One hundred fifty people attended the event, and the Facebook Live stream had 5,100 views, according to Denholder and Batra. They said holding the event in conjunction with RISE was a natural fit, as the conference has made efforts to be inclusive and make the event accessible to more women. It was also an optimal time to draw attention to high-potential, women-led companies in the region, given the audience the conference attracts.

A different kind of pitch competition

Denholder, Batra and their partners achieved their goal of holding a unique pitch competition, said Bhavneet Chahal, whose company GoSkills was one of four selected for further investor conversations. GoSkills offers bite-sized, on-demand business courses for professionals looking to enhance their existing skills or make a career change.

The company currently boasts 90,000 users and has earned $1.5 million in revenue, according to Chahal. She and her 10-team person team, which is distributed in Indonesia, the U.S. and New Zealand, have bootstrapped the company up to this point. But she saw Pitch Like a Girl as an opportunity to bring investors on board. Chahal said she was also drawn to the competition by its emphasis on creating opportunities for women founders.

“The audience for Pitch Like a Girl was different, it really catered for women in tech and the buzz and excitement in the audience was palpable,” she said. Chahal said it can be challenging for founders in the Asia-Pacific region to find investors with a track record of backing women-led businesses. But she sees this as an opportunity for both entrepreneurs and investors, especially given that startups that have women on their founding teams outperform their all-male counterparts by 63%.

“These challenges also present an amazing opportunity for VCs and investors in Hong Kong and Asia-Pacific to capitalize on this gap and target the underserved market of female-founded companies,” Chahal said. “By being an activist investor and leading the charge in supporting more female founders, women entrepreneurs are more likely to seek out these investors and selectively pitch their businesses to them.”

Serving the underserved

Samar Shaheryar echoed Chahal’s take on the atmosphere surrounding the competition. “The energy in the room was so different from other startup events. Supportive and collaborative, not competitive,” she said. Shaheryar’s ecommerce company, Baby Hero, sells baby clothes made with organic, fair trade-sourced material. For every item sold, Baby Hero donates newborn survival toolkits to mothers in rural parts of Pakistan and Kenya as part of its mission to reduce infant mortality rates in the developing world.

Shaheryar said 60% of Baby Hero’s sales come from the U.S. and that the majority of customers live in developed nations. She sees the social aspect of Baby Hero bridging the gap between consumers in wealthy countries and mothers and infants in less privileged parts of the world.

Pitch Like a Girl presented a unique opportunity for Baby Hero, because they’re not always eligible for pitch competitions, according to Shaheryar. “Most pitch competitions in Hong Kong are very tech focused, and as an e-commerce company, we don't usually qualify. It was fantastic to be part of an event that recognized female founders and the varied businesses they create,” she said. “We are a mission-driven consumer products company, not always the first choice for VCs. We're thrilled that the judges saw the potential for our company to scale and deliver in a world that increasingly wants to connect with companies with strong ethics and values like ours.”

Shaheryar said she views the landscape for women entrepreneurs in Asia more favorably than in the U.S., where she is from. Still, she added, there is work to be done to be done in Hong Kong and elsewhere to create a robust culture that supports entrepreneurs.

“Specifically for women, we need investors and financial institutions to recognize that women are often discriminated against in the funding process and to include more women on boards and decision-making teams to help rectify what is sometimes unconscious -- and sometimes very conscious -- bias,” she said.   

Brooke Roberts, a cofounder of the investment platform Sharesies, said that bias became a real concern when her company went into its first raise, so the women-centric focus of Pitch Like a Girl was a welcome shift. The platform enables users to create an investment portfolio with as little as $50 and emphasizes “wealth development” among consumers who are typically ignored by traditional firms, Roberts said. Sharesies’ closed beta launched six weeks ago, and Roberts said there are 2,500 investors participating, 80% of whom are under the age of 40. The company was also a winner at Pitch Like a Girl.

“We’re excited to be able to bring investment opportunities to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been investing,” Roberts said. “Pitch Like a Girl has provided us with global connections [and] investment opportunities.”

Lighting a fire

Serena Pau is no stranger to pitch competitions. She pitches every month, she said, in her quest to secure $2.5 million in Series A funding for her company, Ozmo. The company sells a smart bottle and companion app that tracks users’ water and coffee consumption to help improve their hydration habits. The app will tell you “whether that 4 p.m. latte is a good idea or how much you should drink after that five-mile bike ride,” Pau explained. She said Ozmo is most popular among Millennial-aged women in the U.S. at the moment, but the company will soon expand into China’s women’s lifestyle product market through a partnership with Elleshop China.

Ozmo was also shortlisted for further meetings with the investors who judged Pitch Like a Girl, and Pau aims to hire a data scientist to improve the product once she secures funding. Reflecting on the challenges for women entrepreneurs seeking funding, Pau said the “challenge is global rather than local.”

“I feel female-led startups are still new to the startup scene and the bias is from the onset where the VCs tend to ask men questions about the potential for gains and women about the potential for losses. I hope to see the change in attitude towards women entrepreneurs with the help of more initiatives like Pitch Like a Girl,” she said.

Denholder, Batra and their partners share that hope.

“In the long-term, we sincerely hope we've lit a fire in Hong Kong,” Denholder and Batra said jointly. “The entire community now knows that there are many amazing women entrepreneurs in this ecosystem and the number is only growing. We also believe that as more women start their own businesses, we will also see more women taking up the mantle of investing.”