Women entrepreneurs in Malaysia, there’s a new group of like-minded women out there to support your endeavours.
Mompreneur Asia was recently launched by Niney Chong and radio personality Aishah Sinclair to help more entrepreneurial women and mothers looking to build their businesses.
Chong said she was driven to help empower other women after years of community work in her home state of Sabah.
“Through community work, my personal development training business flourished as well. By this time, Lean In Malaysia had been founded by Sarah Chen and Abir Abdul Rahim. So I started a circle in Sabah,” she said in a telephone interview.
Chong found herself liking what she did for other women – she identified with the realities and struggles of motherhood. Reaching out to Aishah Sinclair, a longtime friend, she shared her idea for a way to connect with more such mothers. Together with four other women, Mompreneur Asia was set up and launched in less than a month.
Support system and education
Chong said Mompreneur Asia will have two elements:
- A support system for mothers, and women, to talk to each other about the challenges they are facing, share experiences and learn about solutions from each other.
- ‘What’s next?’ – an event where entrepreneurs learn how to boost their business and expand it to the Asean region and beyond.
She said there was incredible support for their official launch on March 15th, a feat considering they only made the decision to launch on February 28th.
“We thought if we reached 70 attendees for the launch, it would already be a win, but 100 turned up. We had goosebumps! It only showed (us) that mompreneurs were ready for this.
“They are ready to work together and need this circle to work together,” Chong said. She also clarified that Mompreneur Asia was not an NGO but a platform within the Lean In movement.
Ideas, Solutions and Sharing
Mompreneur Asia will be a safe space and support system for women and mums to bounce ideas off each other, Chong said. “They will also be able to talk about solutions to their business ideas and operations,” she added.
Chong, who is a mother of a five-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, said they wanted mompreneurs to aim for scalable businesses, hence the name ‘Mompreneur Asia’.
“Every business started can be scaled to a global level. We want them to be aware of that. Many mums we work with are making their mark in markets outside Malaysia. We are glad that we have these mums in the circle. Other mums can definitely learn from them,” she said.
A Platform and Place to Network
Mompreneur Asia aims to set up an online marketing platform for their entrepreneurs and organise ‘offline’ events where entrepreneurial women have opportunities to showcase their products in a marketplace.
There will also be networking opportunities to boost the community’s businesses and seminars to educate members.
One major goal Mompreneur Asia hopes for is to help women become more savvy in the digital economy. With that in mind, they have a women leadership seminar in the pipeline.
“The theme to the one-day seminar will centre around the mom-tech-preneur idea – it will also be a networking event. We will be working with government agencies like MaGIC (Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre) and MDEC (Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation) to encourage entrepreneurs in the world of technology.
“You can call it a small scale training programme. We’re looking at making entry fees reasonable for everyone interested to come. We are also asking for support from government agencies and partners who want to collaborate with us,” Chong said.
By Llew-Ann Phang
Pictures courtesy of Mompreneur Asia.
