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Questions for start-ups: PURE!
Nicoline Westen, founder of PURE!
Nicoline Westen’s dream was to help kids in Cambodia lead a better life, the internet enabled her to make that dream a reality. She founded Pure!, a volunteer organisation that support children’s projects in Cambodia, be it financially or by providing helping hands. In our questions for start-ups series, she told thenextwomen how she started out.
1. How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?
10,000 women trained through Goldman Sachs
10,000 women website
Goldman Sachs announced this week 12 new partnerships under its 10,000 Women Initiative scheme. In this scheme that started in March 2008, European and American business schools work together with non-for-profit organisations and business school in developing countries. Together they educate female entrepreneurs in countries such as Brazil, China and India to improve their business and management skills.
September internet events
September will be a busy month for all those interested in women and internet technology related events. In order to keep track of what is going on in September, here’s a selection of upcoming events:
2-5 September, ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008, IMPACT Challenger Exhibition and Convention Center in Bangkok, Thailand.
ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008 is a key networking platform for Asia’s top ICT names to come together and focus on core issues relating to ICT expansion across the region.
Singapore, where are the Mark Zuckerberg wannabe’s?
Interestingly, figures published by a female PhD researcher in 2000 show that the ratio of women to men of total business owners (number of women per 100 men) in Asia and the Pacific in the 1990s is only 22.
That is one of the lowest figures of all the regions in the world. Why the disparity?
Women highflyers networking
“I spend a nice and friendly dinner yesterday with eight international women in a cosy restaurant in Paris 6eme. It is amazing, how lovely you can spend an evening with the persons you just met for the first time.” writes a women nicknamed eya-ee.
These comments are not part of a restaurant review, nor do they refer to a speed dating event with eight women, they are the product of a trend reported by trendwatching.com taking hold of the business travelers scene the past year: women’s networking. Read more
Internet Heroes in Vietnam
Vietnamese women run 25 per cent of the total 160,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam. There are about 20 million Vietnamese online. It has been predicted that this figure will rise to as many as 36 million Internet-users in two years.
It is not surprising therefore that global Internet giants like Yahoo!, Google, and eBay have started to take notice of Vietnam. eBay for instance just announced a partnership with Vietnam’s ChoDienTu. They will develop a co-branded online auction site to go live in three months.
Award for Middle Eastern Internet Women
Yourbusiness, a Business Magazine for Small or Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMES) in the Middle East and Visa, the payment solutions provider, have announced an award for Best Female Entrepreneur yesterday.
The award is part of the ‘YourBusiness SME Awards’, an awards programme open to all small to medium enterprises operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (these are: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman).
Internet heroes in The Philippines
The Filipinos seem to be more offline than online. Out of their population of 88 million, there are 14 million internet users. Web initiatives are therefore few and far between, and web startups and companies by women are even fewer. And this while female entrepreneurship is high in the Philippines: early-stage entrepreneurial activity is at 22.5%, as bnet reports. This may be because, as that same bnet reports, about half of the women entrepreneurs are in manufacturing and retail, businesses for which the internet is not essential. Yet, there are some exciting initiatives involving women in the internet world:
First, Pigmata media, of which female entrepreneur Marie Casas is the CFO and marketing director. Pigmata media is a web startup company, focused on creating well-designed, easy-to-use, websites. It is also linked to the Pinoy Web Startup, an online hub for Philippine-founded web startups. The site profiles and tracks web products and services, highlighting those produced by Philippine web companies in the early stages. Marie Casas also has her own blog on which she writes about personal finance and tech entrepreneurship.
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