Women's Forum 2024

I'm Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia. Granite Asia is a global venture capital firm. We manage close to 5 billion on the Asia side. And over the last 24 years, with our headquarters in Singapore, we have been making investments in technology companies in the US, in China.

So perseverance comes with the whole art of how do you break apart issues? Challenges that companies face? How we as investors would also face in terms of can you stay grounded to support them? And that means breaking apart all these challenges on the day-to-day, month-to-month, quarterly-by-quarterly, yearly basis and saying, “ok, what does it mean for us to help them to resolve those issues?”

A lot of times people talk about a light at the end of the tunnel. In our business, as a good investor, you have to imagine light because usually they don't have a light. In the beginning, right? And then as the light starts, it gets brighter. Then it's about how to navigate, how to help them in terms of resourcing.

There is no shortcut, there's no quick returns. But at the end of the journey, if you get there, I can guarantee you it will be a great journey.

My name is Danny Tang. I am the Co-Founder of the VSPO. I've been the CFO of the VSPO since the inception. I'm also head of the Global Strategy office, where we try to explore how to replicate what we do here in China, in Asia, and then replicate it in the rest of the world.

VSPO is the largest esports company in Asia. We aim to provide a full suite of services that will provide the best, esports experiences and content for our fans, both in China and the rest of the world.

Perseverance is a big word. When you hear the word, a lot of people assume that it's really, really difficult, but it's not. Sometimes perseverance just means taking an extra step forward, taking a jump of faith, even without knowing the outcome. And sometimes it means following what you think the future would be like. Even though the present day looks nothing like it yet.  At the end of that episode, when you look back, you realize you've really come a long way from that starting point. 

I'm Gillian. I'm the founder and CEO of Homage. We're a care platform that combines qualified care professionals with technology to deliver care services in home. For us at Homage, we want to mobilize care professionals to amplify that kind of impact and reach people at points of time in their lives where they might not be feeling the strongest or feeling vulnerable.

For me, perseverance means aligning what you know, you truly care about with the willingness to endure challenges and anything that might come your way. So there was a time after, you know, when COVID-19 was stabilizing and we were shifting our focus away from growth to sustainability. And that was challenging because that meant we had to perform many changes across the organization.

It wasn't easy for the teams to endure, but I think it was very well worth it because we had that north star in mind, and our mission was what we cared about. 

Hi, My name is Utari Octavianti. I'm the Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer of Aruna.

Perseverance is one of the acknowledge or the awareness that we create as an entrepreneur. So in Aruna, we focus on connecting the small scale fishermen to the global market. The mission is to making the sea a better livelihood for all by integrating the supply chain. We connect all of the fishermen to get the better market with the support of the ecosystem and the technology.

So by having the vision and the clear mission to integrating this supply chain in fisheries, we know how to do like step by step to achieve our mission. So, I think, the combination between the consistency and the willingness to change the industry, it's all the meaning of perseverance.

My name is Tessa Wijaya. I'm CEO and Co-Founder at Xendit. I run day to day operations as well as being in charge of some business lines. Xendit is a digital payment infrastructure player. Our mission is to build payment infrastructure for the new digital world in Southeast Asia.

Perseverance to me is the ability to hustle and to stay on mission. At Xendit, we're a very mission driven company. We want to change the world and do our bit in digitizing the payment infrastructure in southeast Asia. So how do you translate that mission to a goal that's attainable to other folks in the company? We have targeted things like, hey, let's ensure that we take on market share. How much do we process on our platform? I think that's extremely important. If you believe in what you want to do, stick to it and do whatever it takes to succeed and that's perseverance to me.