Episodes

Today’s BONUS and final episode of Season 5 is with a food entrepreneur from Hawaii, Tina Kekoolani. Tina is the creator and owner of Haleakala Supah Shots. Her Haleakala Supah Shots is a healthy re-imagination of the classic Hawaiian chili pepper water. Her immune-boosting elixir is made with Hawaiian chili pepper water, fruit juice, vinegar, organic agave and hand-harvested Hawaiian sea salt. Tina lives as a teacher and farmer on the island of Maui, having moved to Maui from Oahu where she gre...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Kaniza Shafie. She is the co-founder of Kebun Kota in Kuantan, Pahang. She is also an architect and mother of five. We started by talking about her farm, Kebun Kota which supplies fresh harvest her cafe, Roots. Kebun Kota is a 14-acre farm that was once a quarry. Kaniza is proud that she and her husband, Dr Muhklis Chua, regenerated this brownfield into an eco-friendly urban farm and agriculture research centre that she lovingly calls Kebun ...

Today’s episode is with a founding director of a non-profit from Sri Lanka, Debbie Edirisinghe. Debbie is with Child Action Lanka. Child Action Lanka began in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka in 2006. She started it with her husband, Dilshan, when she was asked to take over from a woman teaching 8 street children. (Listen to her story in the episode.) Some 16 years later, her organization has grown to reach over 1,500 children in 8 districts in Sri Lanka. Her organization offers housing and food, sc...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Bangalore, India, Farah Ismail. She is the founder of Interact Consulting and calls herself a courage catalyst, coach, facilitator, and speaker. Farah has more than 25 years of experience in the field of leadership and cross-cultural competence from her years abroad and working across countries and cultures. She began her career in the aviation industry in the Middle East, returning to India during the IT and services boom to work in the business and ...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Sharifah Sarah. She started the business with her cousin when she was a university student studying medicine. Today, she is the co-founder of By Sarah, a business she started with her cousin based on their love for each other and their love for the exquisite songket, a type of woven fabric in the brocade family of textiles unique to Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. By Sarah uses songket in crafting all of its bespoke accessories an...

Do you have to know how to code in order to start an education technology business? Or what if you’re female and not as young as some of the tech startup founders you see around you? Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Indonesia who lives in Singapore, Nino Mouton. Nino is the founder of the education tech startup, Playbook. She’s the ex-editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Indonesia and content strategist turned education tech warrior who wants to reinvent education for the young people of ...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from India, Upasna Dash who is the Founder & CEO of Jajabor Brand Consultancy. Upasna took her love for storytelling to start her PR agency at 26 years old. She started with 10,000 rupees in 2017 which is barely RM600 or about US120 with a laptop, and her grandfather’s well-worn couch in her family home and has since grown it to a 50-person company with 40+ clients in a few short years! Yet her motivation isn’t just about building a great PR business. It’s...

Would you take the easy path or would you strive for something bigger than yourself even if you didn’t have to? My guest today didn’t want to regret that she didn’t do something for herself when she could. Her friends said she could just sit back and enjoy her life - after all she had the means to do so. Having had her own career when she was younger and being inspired by the mavens of the Malaysian beauty industry, she felt it would be tragic if she didn’t try something on her own and that’s ho...

Getting out of your comfort zone. Having the courage to go against norms and what’s expected of you. Becoming a mother at 41. Cultural explorations and coming full circle. My guest today is Emilie Chung who co-founded Sinellia Tea with her husband in Guangdong, China. She left France (where she had grown up, born to a Chinese dad and British mum) for China when she was 30 years old and has never looked back since. She didn't speak Mandarin when she arrived and yet felt completely at home! In thi...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, author and book publisher from Singapore, Pearlin Siow who calls herself the Book Mama at Boss Of Me. Her journey is a little unusual in that she started writing her bestseller book first and her business came after when more and more entrepreneurs started asking her to write their books. Pearlin started as a journalist at Singapore Press Holdings upon graduation. In 2000, she left to found an online barter site (which she talks about in this episode) and...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, sustainability consultant, mother and former lawyer, Jay Desan. She is the co-founder of BoomGrow, an agritech company that is growing clean greens in Malaysia. This mother of two never expected she would be in the tech space but she did know a lot about sustainability. Jay said that she spent many years in the UK studying and understanding corporate responsibility in human rights which she later expanded to re-imagining the corporation. (ESG refers to E...

Is it a must for businesses to keep growing? Is it peculiar if someone doesn’t want to grow her business? Well in today’s episode, I speak to a guest who is at a crossroads of her business because she asked herself, “Do we want to keep growing and growing? Is it an inevitable path for all businesses?” What if she doesn’t want to do that and just wants to maintain what she’s doing now? Deepa is the founder & Innovation Director for J Gordhan & Co Ltd. in Hong Kong. She manages a business that bri...

Have you ever felt that you were meant to do something more? That your life is going well but there was a feeling you couldn’t shake off? Today’s episode is with Jenny Toh. Jenny is a Certifed Life Coach and Founder of River Life Coaching in Singapore. Jenny felt this strongly at one point in her life. At that juncture in her life, she was a mother of three with a legal career. Yet this former lawyer knew in her heart that she was meant to do something more. And that something more was to help i...

Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Teh Wuan Xin. She is the Founder & CEO of AI Talent, a business that develops child entrepreneurs. At its core, it is an e-learning platform that provides a conducive environment for children to start their business journeys where they learn from entrepreneurs and corporate leaders through projects. According to their website, they have partnered with more than 70 corporations and trained more than 200 coaches and 150 education centres. Hers...

Welcome to Season 5 of Womenpreneur Asia and I am your host, Krista Goon. I started this podcast during the pandemic lockdown in 2020 and it's been a journey indeed! In this trailer, I talk about some exciting news and some of what I've learnt in the past 18 months. If you are a returning listener, thank you! It means a lot to me. If you've just found my podcast, thank you! I hope you enjoy this season (and if it intrigues you, listen to the rest of the other seasons as well). The podcast proper...