Ketty Lie remembers her college graduation like it was yesterday. Her mother held her hand tightly as they walked across the lawn to the ceremony and told her how proud she was that Ketty had achieved the dream she never got to fulfill herself.

Following a successful first year in 2020, the Women Founders Academy 2021 will offer a new group of founders training to sharpen their leadership skills, build strong teams and address their unique growth needs, including funding. They will take part in workshops, connect with a community of Google advisors, venture capitalists and business executives and receive mentoring from dedicated subject matter experts. The 10 participants, from five countries in Asia Pacific, are:

• Dorothy Yio, (Singapore). Engage Rocket is a cloud-based software company that helps organizations improve their employee experience.
• Sophie Jokelson, (Singapore). Cove is a co-living company that makes it easier, faster and more flexible to rent comfortable homes at honest prices.
• Vanessa Geraldine, (Indonesia). Prieds Technology offers an all-in-one business and technology solution to improve business efficiency.
• Utari Octavianty, (Indonesia). Aruna is a fisheries platform that connects small-scale fishermen to the global market through technology.
• Ketty Lie, (Indonesia). ErudiFi is a technology company focused on expanding access to education in Southeast Asia.
• Angela Jihee Park, (Korea). Kokozi offers an audio content platform and device that provides children with unique audio experiences. 
• Ji Eun Chung, (Korea). CODIT runs an AI data intelligence platform that helps companies manage legal, regulatory and policy risks and opportunities.
• Monika Mehta, (India). Zealth-AI is a platform that helps manage cancer through digital remote monitoring and patient engagement.
• Laina Emmanuel, (India). BrainSightAI is building a neuroinformatics platform that uses technology to help answer questions about neuro-oncological and neuro-psychiatric disorders.
• Yugari Nagata, (Japan). DATA VIZ LAB is a data analytics and visualization consulting company that builds on cloud technology.

Ketty is ready to meet her fellow founders and excited about the opportunity to share lessons and experiences. “Sometimes it’s lonely being a woman founder in the tech startup world,” she says. “Finding a community of like-minded women who are building tech-based businesses in Asia hasn’t been easy and this program provides a unique platform that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”

The Women Founders Academy class of 2021 will celebrate its graduation in November. We’re looking forward to helping these founders take their next steps as entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Ketty Lie remembers her college graduation like it was yesterday. Her mother held her hand tightly as they walked across the lawn to the ceremony and told her how proud she was that Ketty had achieved the dream she never got to fulfill herself.

Following a successful first year in 2020, the Women Founders Academy 2021 will offer a new group of founders training to sharpen their leadership skills, build strong teams and address their unique growth needs, including funding. They will take part in workshops, connect with a community of Google advisors, venture capitalists and business executives and receive mentoring from dedicated subject matter experts. The 10 participants, from five countries in Asia Pacific, are:

• Dorothy Yio, (Singapore). Engage Rocket is a cloud-based software company that helps organizations improve their employee experience.
• Sophie Jokelson, (Singapore). Cove is a co-living company that makes it easier, faster and more flexible to rent comfortable homes at honest prices.
• Vanessa Geraldine, (Indonesia). Prieds Technology offers an all-in-one business and technology solution to improve business efficiency.
• Utari Octavianty, (Indonesia). Aruna is a fisheries platform that connects small-scale fishermen to the global market through technology.
• Ketty Lie, (Indonesia). ErudiFi is a technology company focused on expanding access to education in Southeast Asia.
• Angela Jihee Park, (Korea). Kokozi offers an audio content platform and device that provides children with unique audio experiences. 
• Ji Eun Chung, (Korea). CODIT runs an AI data intelligence platform that helps companies manage legal, regulatory and policy risks and opportunities.
• Monika Mehta, (India). Zealth-AI is a platform that helps manage cancer through digital remote monitoring and patient engagement.
• Laina Emmanuel, (India). BrainSightAI is building a neuroinformatics platform that uses technology to help answer questions about neuro-oncological and neuro-psychiatric disorders.
• Yugari Nagata, (Japan). DATA VIZ LAB is a data analytics and visualization consulting company that builds on cloud technology.

Ketty is ready to meet her fellow founders and excited about the opportunity to share lessons and experiences. “Sometimes it’s lonely being a woman founder in the tech startup world,” she says. “Finding a community of like-minded women who are building tech-based businesses in Asia hasn’t been easy and this program provides a unique platform that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”

The Women Founders Academy class of 2021 will celebrate its graduation in November. We’re looking forward to helping these founders take their next steps as entrepreneurs and business leaders.

After Khushboo Aggarwal’s dad suffered a cardiac event brought on by complications from diabetes while she was traveling abroad, she realized there was a need for a better support system for Indian patients and their worried loved ones. 

Khushboo co-founded Zyla Health: a digital care management platform, providing personalized care to patients with chronic illnesses. Zyla offers services like live chat support and algorithms that can issue alerts when there are causes for concern in patient data. It also recently extended its services to help COVID-19 patients  recover at home.

For Khushboo, turning her original idea into a fully-fledged health management platform wasn’t easy. In 2020, Khushboo was part of the inaugural class of the Google for Startups Women Founders Academy in APAC, where she was able to gain valuable skills and tap into the advice of mentors — enabling her to take Zyla to the next level. 

Today, we’re opening applications for this year’s class, focused on women founders leading startups at an early stage of their growth. We will be accepting applications until June 25. 

The Google for Startups Women Founders Academy: APAC is a twelve-week program designed to help founders improve their leadership skills, build strong teams and address their unique growth needs, including funding. Participants will take part in workshops where we’ll share lessons from Google’s experiences to help them tackle some of the key challenges they might face. To connect founders to a wider network, we’ll bring together a community of Google advisors, venture capitalists and business executives. And selected startups will work with a dedicated mentor.

There are women like Khushboo across APAC and around the world, motivated to solve problems they see in their everyday lives. We are dedicated to supporting these women entrepreneurs, because we know their solutions build up our communities and help local economies grow. We look forward to helping the class of 2021 take their ideas forward.

Helping small businesses, especially other women entrepreneurs, is what drives Sonja Johar, co-founder of the chatbot service Halosis. As she explains, “In Indonesia, there are millions of women who need jobs, and want to help their family financially…if I can provide an easy, affordable solution for them, I can change their future.” 

Sonja is one of the many amazing female founders pursuing big ideas across Asia Pacific. The impact of Covid-19 means it’s a tough environment for founders everywhere, but it can be even harder for women—who tend to take on disproportionate family care responsibilities. As a working mom herself (with another one on the way!), Sonja is even more motivated to help other women entrepreneurs because she knows how hard it is to balance work and family life. 

Time and time again, we’ve seen that when we invest in female founders, like in our Campus for Moms program, it has a multiplier effect in supporting local economies—something even more important given today’s challenges. In 2019, more than 20 unicorns were started by women founders, but even with this success, women are still massively underrepresented among startups. For instance, in Korea, only nine percent of founders are women. 

That’s why, this week, we launched Immersion: Women Founders: an eight-week, skills-building mentorship program for high potential startups selected from the Asia Pacific startup community. The selected startups will be partnering with experienced Google mentors to help them solve growth challenges—whether it’s expanding their customer base, growing revenue, or preparing for fundraising. Along with Sonja, this cohort includes: 

• Hanna Kim, Grip (Korea): A live-streaming e-commerce platform in Korea, changing the way people sell and buy products.
• Jungeun Lee, Mabo (Korea): A pioneering mindfulness meditation app in Korea, creating a safe mobile app space where users can practice meditation and connect with a community.
• Afia Fitriati, Gadjian (Indonesia): A platform to automate tedious HR and admin operations, helping change people management for Indonesian SMEs.
• Khushboo Aggarwal, Zyla (India):A digital chronic care management platform, delivering personalized real-time care for patients with chronic illnesses.
• Kyoko Otawa, Latona (Japan):A cutting-edge computing solution for factory and unmanned retail, helping with automation and cost savings.
• Machi Takahashi, Stroly (Japan): An online platform for illustrated maps, so people can experience different places through local illustration.

I was so energized during the kick-off session this week as the founders from across the region met each other and talked about their shared experiences and hopes for the program. We’re looking forward to helping these incredible founders take the next steps towards success and growth.

I found my passion for supporting startups during my first visit to Pakistan in 2013. After working at Google for more than three years, I’d decided to take on a project helping women entrepreneurs in Asia Pacific. That’s how I ended up speaking to Pakistani university students, hearing from talented female founders with a vision for change, and working to connect them with mentorship and resources. Here were smart women with big ideas—it was incredible to see them make meaningful contributions to their society, even in the most difficult situations. 

After a few years, I heard about a new project in Korea: an opportunity to continue  supporting founders, but this time in my home country. Campus Seoul, a dedicated space where startups can receive training and mentorship, opened its doors in the summer of 2015, becoming the first Google space of its kind in Asia (we’ve since added a sister Campus in Tokyo). 

Five years in Seoul

From the beginning, we focused on building that same sense of community I’d seen in Pakistan, and putting in place support structures that Korean startups hadn’t had until then. We wanted to provide a place where startups could connect with their fellow founders, tap into Google’s knowledge and skills, and be part of our broader, global Google for Startups network. 

A sense of community during COVID-19

Today, we see many startups struggling with the impact of COVID-19. But the Korean startup community has come together in solidarity.

Founders and their employees joined a region-wide discussion with VCs about managing change

https://sites.google.com/corp/view/gfsonlinetalk/online-talk-startup-survival-funding

And as the need to work remotely presented new challenges, Campus alumni Dable, Wanted, and Jaranda stepped up, hosting a virtual event to share their tips for working from home and staying strong as a team.

• Dable CEO Chaehyun Lee recommended that, whenever possible, teams choose virtual meetings over instant messaging, to avoid missing out on non-verbal cues, get immediate clarification on questions, and prevent misunderstandings.

• Bokkee Lee, CEO at Wanted, stressed the need to avoid communication overload—and also urged startup employees to “be each other’s pacemaker”, checking in with teammates regularly to guard against loneliness and isolation.

• Seojung Chang, the Jaranda CEO, spoke about the importance of recognising and managing differing remote work styles, putting the efficiency of the team as a whole above that of any one person, and giving people the autonomy to work towards shared goals in their own way. 

It’s not easy to be a startup founder, whether you’re a female entrepreneur in Pakistan or a mom with a small business idea in Korea. It’s especially difficult in a global pandemic when so much is uncertain. Helping startups build resilience and plan ahead will continue to be our first priority. 

From what I’ve seen time and time again, I know Korea’s startups will stay driven, focused and optimistic. As we look back on an amazing first five years of Google for Startups in Korea, we’ll keep providing the support, mentorship and community that our founders need. Together, we’ll get through this crisis and back to what startups do best: imagining the future, and making big ideas real.