Female entrepreneurs recounted their journeys and challenges in building their careers in a session entitled "Women Entrepreneurs Forum: An Intergenerational Dialogue" at the Global Summit of Women (GSW) 2022 in Bangkok on Friday.
Sharala Axryd, the Malaysian founder and chief executive of the Center for Applied Data Analytics (CADA), recalled growing up in a traditional Hindu family in Malaysia.
She was questioned about her ambition to pursue a career in engineering, with the insinuation that this type of job would make her unattractive to potential husbands. Ms Axryd persevered and became an engineer abroad, but her experience inspired her to return to Malaysia to create CADA.
She said she has always yearned to foster talented people who want to use data to disrupt the digital world and create a data-driven digital ecosystem at her home base in Malaysia.
Jareeporn Jarukornsakul, the 55-year-old chair and chief executive of WHA Group (Thailand), said her entrepreneurial spirit started at a very young age. That passion fuelled her to set up her own firm at age 26.
At that time, she noticed Thailand was transitioning from an agricultural country to an industrial one. Ms Jareeporn started a firm that builds factories and warehouses that suit the requirements of global brands.
Her company has grown exponentially since the early 2000s, and now WHA is a leading firm that covers four major businesses: integrated logistics, industrial estates, power and utilities.
Ms Jareeporn said crises happen regularly, so her advice for chief executives is to always look ahead and learn new things every day, especially related to technology.
Jasoe Natori, the Filipina founder and chief executive of The Natori Co, said she worked as an investment banker on Wall Street for almost a decade. Then the stock market stopped providing fulfilment in her life, so she embarked on a journey to showcase Filipino high-end textiles.
Ms Natori said growth sometimes comes from the most unexpected places, noting that 2021 was her best year yet. She attributed the success to her son setting up a proper e-commerce channel for the textile products before the pandemic hit.
Ms Natori said this outcome demonstrates it is essential to be prepared and embrace change.
Phensiri Sathianvongnusar, co-founder and chief executive of aCommerce (Thailand), said she knew something was missing when working a stable full-time job at a large Japanese conglomerate. She decided to quit despite strong opposition from her parents and jumped to work with a startup that focuses on e-commerce.
This inspired Ms Phensiri to set up a company in 2013 and learn everything about building brands online from scratch.
She is proud she believed in herself because aCommerce would not have become a one-stop-stop for global brands, serving more than 12 million consumers, without that belief.