Woman of the world

• Founder of 500-backed travel startup Luxe Nomad Stephanie Chai was featured in Tatler’s piece on female-led digital platforms in Malaysia.

• The startup was founded in 2012 as a place for hotels to advertise flash sales. According to Tatler, it is now one of Asia Pacific’s foremost luxury villa booking portals and management platforms.
• In 2018, Stephanie was named Young Entrepreneur Of The Year by the Asia Corporate Excellence & Sustainability Awards.
• The startup is currently seeing an uptick in domestic travel and bookings in countries where Covid-19 cases are on the downtrend.
• Read Stephanie’s feature on Tatler here.

Education in equality

• So-Young Kang, the founder of 500-backed EdTech startup Gnowbe, authored a course on the platform that is currently being offered free in conjunction with International Women’s Day. Gnowbe is a female-run tech company with over 50% female management and employees.

• Titled “Foster Gender Inclusive Cultures”, the course is designed to raise awareness around this topic and provide practical tips on creating more inclusive and safe environments for all regardless of gender.
• The course contains 17 microlearning sessions and is targeted at anyone who wants to learn about unconscious bias and how to promote gender-inclusive environments.
• Sign up for the free course here.

Closing the gender gap

• 500-backed iPrice Group conducted a survey in Hong Kong and six Southeast Asia countries on the percentage of women leaders in e-commerce.

• According to its report, Hong Kong took the lead in closing the gender gap at 55%, followed by Vietnam (46%) and Thailand (44%).
• Overall, there is a 60–40 disparity between men and women in positions of power — not as wide as one would assume given centuries of gender inequality.
• Read the full report here.

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500 Startups is a venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems. In Southeast Asia, 500 Startups invests through the pioneering 500 Southeast Asia family of funds. The 500 Southeast Asia funds have backed over 240 companies across multiple sectors from internet to consumer to deep technology. It continues to connect founders with capital, expertise and powerful regional and global networks to help them succeed.

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