These 6 Women Are Making Their Marks in Deep Tech Field
Image Credit: Andrew Neel on Unsplash
E27 | 2 April 2020
BEHIND SOME OF THE LEADING NAMES IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN DEEP TECH FIELD ARE THESE WOMEN LEADERS
Technology, like many other industries, has long been associated with being the men’s world. But thanks to advances of gender equality in almost every corner of the world, tech has begun to welcome a wave of disruptive women in leadership positions.
According to a statistic shared by Leftronics, there has been a study that proves that businesses led by women have performed three times better than those with male executives. Technology is no different and this trend is true for startups as well.
Despite these facts, more than half of the women in tech earn less than men in the same position, sometimes even in the same company.
In this listicle, we are looking at those who have made their marks in the deep tech field. Because honestly, it’s time.
Yamini Bhat, Co-founder and CEO of Vymo
Vymo is an AI-enabled personal assistant for salespeople, co-founded by Yamini Bhat.
Bhat said in an interview with Bangkok Bank Inno Hub that automation and productivity are two of the things she’s most interested in since her university days. Bhat was a computer science student and had a stint at McKinsey, driving large-scale sales transformation for large enterprises in the financial, healthcare, and telecom industries, before establishing Vymo.
“In trying to understand skill gaps in the businesses, my team found that a lot of data was missing, which prevented us from answering any questions. It was around that time in 2013 when a very close friend of mine was working with Google as a part of its mobility team, and we realised that salespeople needed a solution to help them input data into CRM systems and drive engagement,” Bhat shares about the first time she got together with other co-founders to found Vymo.
She used her experience in corporate worlds to keep up with internal working coordination, which typically grows worse when the organisation scales up.
“Whenever there were shifts in strategy — for example when we would think, ‘Let’s change our playbook, and let’s do customer segmentation differently’— after three or four months we would realise that a gap of understanding exists between those who set the strategy and salespeople in remote locations who have to carry it out,” she explains the basis of what Vymo offers.
“Technology can completely change the game as you can broadcast messages and have two-way conversations. Moreover, you can tailor messages based on different contexts to draw attention to what matters for a particular salesperson in a particular region. By building something that employees love to use, you can bridge the understanding gap in a matter of minutes instead of months or years,” Bhat continues.
Today, Vymo has customers in seven countries across the Asia Pacific. According to TechCrunch’s article, it employs about 100 people, has amassed over 40 enterprise customers, including life insurance firms AIA Group and AXA.
It recently raised US$18 million in a Series B round led by Emergence Capital, and joined by existing investor Sequoia India to expand its footprint in the US and other markets.
In regards to her journey as the CEO of a six-year-old startup, Bhat lends her insight about gender equality in such a niche and male-dominant tech field. “I wish there are more women on the other side of the table when we go and meet customers. The few women leaders who I know have been extremely good at rallying their teams, having a combined vision, and being persistent in trying to achieve that vision while remaining very outcome-focused,” she says.
“That being said. I don’t think being a woman in the tech world is tougher. In terms of physical energy, I think the differences in gender don’t matter. I don’t particularly think it is extra tough being a woman in the tech world,” she concludes.
Jeeta Bandhopadhyay, Co-founder and COO of Tookitaki
Jeeta Bandhopadhyay had a non-technical background yet she was still fascinated by the power of technology to change lives. “I wanted to be part of an innovative idea that can make the world better,” she says, recalling her motivation to build Tookitaki in an interview with Jungle Ventures.
Tookitaki tries to solve a global problem, which is money laundering. It seeks to become a solution for banks to curb money laundering, and in doing so, help stop a number of crimes such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, and corruption.
Being a part of such grand vision, Bandhopadhyay shared that she is lucky enough to see the development of countries in Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore, that becomes more tech-minded in terms of “upgraded educational systems, policies aimed at nurturing innovative startups, and the creation of well-oiled tech ecosystems that help entrepreneurs”.
“AI and machine learning are taking over our lives, and Southeast Asia has been very quick to identify their benefits. These countries are encouraging both big businesses to use modern technologies and technology companies to fine-tune their innovation and scale up to other markets,” she says.
According to her prediction, AI and machine learning’s rise to prominence will result in data privacy regulations having a big shift.
When it comes to more female tech entrepreneurs, Bandhopadhyay says that despite many false beliefs, the tech industry is neither biased against gender nor discriminative.
“The sector looks for skills, innovative and collaborative mindset, risk-taking attitude, and perseverance. Those who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs in the tech sector should be willing to persevere past the initial stages of scepticism from colleagues. Just believe in yourself and learn diligently,” she shares her mindset in viewing equality.
For now, Bandhopadhyay believes that Singapore still has a big share of female entrepreneurs more than other countries in Southeast Asia. “I believe the country’s love for technology, status as an international hub, world-class facilities and a business-friendly atmosphere is helping the womenfolk here,” she says.
Ayesha Khanna, co-founder, and CEO of ADDO AI
ADDO AI is an artificial intelligence solution firm and incubator co-founded by Dr. Ayesha Khanna. ADDO AI previously has been featured in Forbes as one of the four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia, with Khanna named as one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by the same magazine last year.
Built on a partnership between industry and academia, the company was first inspired by Khanna’s experience advising the Singapore government on the Skills Future programme, which strengthens collaboration between industry and academia to foster innovation, as told in Tech Collective SEA.
According to The Peak Magazine, ADDO AI is an AI consultancy firm that was born out of Khanna’s innate concern that there are more restraints for girls to be considered good at tech compared to boys.
Khanna shared a story about a little girl who was helping to build electronic parts for a robot in a hackathon five years ago. She was then shooed away by her own mother, and instead of putting her son in front of Khanna, neglecting how good the daughter was at doing it.
This incident also prompted her to start 21st Century (21C) Girls, a registered charity that teaches school girls coding and runs a series of AI workshops for polytechnic students.
“To have confidence, girls must have an intuitive understanding of technology, AI, and data because every single industry, from the law, to manufacturing, to genetics, will have these elements in 21st Century Girls,” she explains.
An economics scholarship receiver from Harvard with a master’s degree in operations research at Columbia University, Khanna had a stint in Wall Street where she spent more than a decade developing large-scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems.
Khanna stresses that despite everything that she’s achieved, women remain a minority in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field.
“We need a lot more women who are comfortable with doing technology and being engineers and data scientists. Otherwise, the systems that you develop will be grossly biased,” she says.
For her 21C Girls, it is definitely on track with a partnership with Visa and Google for its programmes, which has taught over 2,000 students and will be offering classes to boys as well, especially those from underprivileged families, and polytechnic students.
In 2012, Khanna with her husband and two kids moved to Singapore, with the belief that Singapore is where the future is.
In Singapore, Khanna was on the Ministry of Education’s 2014 Aspire Steering Committee, doing her part in reviewing high education reform and applied to learn.
In her point of view, Khanna said she sees Singapore as a country that has what it takes to be a convener of dialogue between the East and West to improve accountability, transparency, and ethics in the use of AI and advanced technology across the world.
“Not only is there a gap in global leadership on ethical design, governance, and use of AI, what’s worse is, when they do talk about it, it’s also the Western experts talking to one another. No one is asking the Chinese, Indians or Japanese how they believe AI should be governed. Yet, the impact of AI is going to be felt most by billions of people in Asia.”
Aside from leading her company, Khanna collaborated with her husband Parag Khanna, who was a foreign policy adviser in former US president Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and senior geopolitical adviser to the United States Special Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It resulted in their 2012 book Hybrid Reality, in which they explored the co-evolution of humans, technology and geopolitics.
Fengru Lin, Co-Founder & CEO and Rabail Toor, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of TurtleTree Labs
Fengru Lin and Rabail Toor are a dynamite duo of women in deep tech who co-founded TurtleTree Labs along with Max Rye in 2019. Green Queen’s article shared that TurtleTree Labs is a startup that claims to produce the world’s first lab-grown dairy milk that recreates the exact composition, functionality, and taste of cow’s milk at a fraction of the carbon footprint compared to conventional dairy farming.
Back in January, the startup just closed a pre-seed round led by alternative protein investors Lever VC, joined by Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud’s VC firm KBW Ventures and Silicon Valley investors K2 Global.
Now with the investments, both Lin and Toor are on the mission to recreate milk-making glands out of stem cells and feeding them as they grow and lactate, filtering off their excrement while capturing their milky produce, as reported by AgFunder News.
With the infant and baby formula industry offering higher price points than other dairy products like milk or cream, TurtleTree’s technology is positive that they can compete by offering increasingly comprehensive nutritional and environmental benefits.
Turtle Tree tries to aim for an existing trade where donors provide milk for premature or sick babies whose mothers’ milk production may not have started as well as a large market of mothers who may struggle to produce enough milk for their child, or their milk may sometimes even lack vital nutrition.
Lin said the genes of her stem cell prototype formulation can be adapted to pack in an evermore optimised and personalised nutritional profile, with a shelf life that’s just like real milk –but with no hormones.
With their emphatic mission of providing personalised milk with a safer operation, two women heading the company seems like a perfect match.
Verleen Goh, Co-Founder at Alchemy Foodtech
Verleen Goh is the name behind Singapore-based startup Alchemy Foodtech that was founded in 2015. In an article by Green Queen, Goh is said to be on a mission to use biotechnology and medical technology in everyday foods in order to fight the global diabetes crisis alongside co-founder Alan Phua.
Alchemy Foodtech has created a gluten-free and vegan product that can be incorporated into staple foods such as white rice, bread, noodles, and flour to help lower the GI levels and increase the fibre content of these foods.
Goh is a Food Science and Technology graduate from the National University of Singapore. She co-founded the company with the belief that food is the new medicine, and that food science and technology is the vehicle to create new functional foods and ingredients to combat chronic diseases.
Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Co-Founder & CEO and Dr. Ka Yi Ling, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Shiok Meats
Another foodtech startup hailing from Singapore is Shiok Meats, which is also helmed by two women co-founders, Dr. Sandya Sriram and Dr. Ka Yi Ling. According to Green Queen’s article, they both started Shiok Meats in 2018 to tackle the environmental footprint of traditional seafood farming over the concern of how Asia’s consumption of seafood continues to grow.
Shiok Meats uses cellular technology to harvest seafood products in their labs and already managed to cultivate a shrimp product that has been sampled in the highly popular dish shrimp dumplings. Shiok Meats just recently got accepted into the US-based accelerator Y Combinator, which has given them the needed boost to commercialise their cultured shrimp within this year.
Sriram and Ka Yi started off as two scientists who were working at the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research—or A*STAR—in Singapore. Using stem cells and cells to make real meat, they were able to do so without harming any animals, as an article in KrAsia highlighted.
Shiok Meats started off with US$10,000 from an angel investor, and the co-founders used it to rent a lab on St. John’s Island, one of the Southern Islands in Singapore. “We’re both stem cell biologists, so we were confident that if we could take stem cells from mammals, we could do the same with marine animals. It took us only a few months to polish the protocols and we filed our patent in January this year,” Sriram says.
For Sriram herself, prior to Shiok Meats, she already co-founded two companies: biotech and healthcare news site Biotech in Asia as well as edutech and event management company SciGlo.
Currently, according to Sriram, the research done by Shiok Meats is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. The founders have plans to commercialise Shiok’s products in 2021.
In April 2019, the startup raised US$ 4.6 million in a seed funding round led by Monde Nissin CEO Henry Soesanto, Y Combinator, AiiM Partners, Big Idea Ventures, and other investors.
Reportedly, the company is developing cell-based crustacean meats such as crab and lobster.
With women leading such a niche tech field, the future is in its brighter way. A caring and sustainable future are within sights, and these women are the fighters and the hopes that will help change the face of technology and pave the way for future women tech entrepreneurs.
