Would you rather make a killing or just a living? With the growth of the Internet and other new industries, there are more and more opportunities to make a killing when starting a business. Knowing successful business owners’ experiences is helpful and necessary to inspire you and save you some trouble. Read on for a list of 3 Asian business owners that are making a killing!
1. Yaqian Tou (Concon)
If the lingerie that’s currently in fashion isn’t what you like to wear, why not start your own lingerie brand? That’s why Yanqian Tou (Concon), a woman who has been in the industry for many years, founded Ubras, which has become the driving force behind lingerie trends in China.
Concon said she didn’t like traditional spaghetti straps or lace underwear because they were uncomfortable and the straps would often fall off, so she decided to develop a comfortable underwear product that was non-binding and size-free.
Ubras’ annual sales in 2020 on Tmall exceeded 1.5 billion yuan, an increase of more than 800% year-on-year. In China 2021, Ubras sold over 300 million GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) in the 618 shopping festival, over 300% year-on-year, ranking firmly as the TOP 1 lingerie brand in real-time sales. In only three years, Ubras has become the number one brand in China’s lingerie industry.
Ubras’ great success has led to Concon being selected as one of the “Top 20 Potential Women in China Business” by Forbes 2022.
2. Rachel Lim
Can you believe that this 34-year-old woman borrowed her mother’s life savings back then just for a fashion adventure? When Rachel Lim started to be one of the Asian business owners, she knew she couldn’t fail. This is why she created Love, Bonito, which stands out from the rest of the fashion retail brands.
Rachel Lim developed Love, Bonito from a blog selling second-hand clothes in 2010. Since its inception, the store business has shown rapid growth to become the largest omnichannel fashion retail brand in Southeast Asia. A total of 19 stores have been opened in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Hong Kong, China.
It opened its first China store in Hong Kong in July this year and its first store in the U.S. next year. On October 27, 2021, it closed a $50 million Series C round of funding. China’s Chunhua Capital Group led the investment. This partnership will serve as a cultural fusion between the two brands and further expand the customer circle.
For her successful leadership of Love, Bonito, Rachel Lim was awarded the inaugural Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list in 2016.
3. Qinya Li (Cici)
If you’re a maverick, adventurous, outspoken and cool girl, then you must know COLORKEY! One of the Asian business owners, Qinya Li, is distressed that young girls are buying poor-quality cosmetics. She wanted to show consumers that Chinese makeup can be hip and cool. She desired young girls could buy very cost-effective, high-quality makeup products at an affordable price.
So in January 2018, Ms. Qinya Li, who has more than 20 years of experience in the beauty industry, founded Meishang Co. with a group of veteran beauty industry partners and birthed the beauty brand Colorkey in the same year.
Before founding Colorkey, Qinya had worked for L’Oréal, Avon and Cazeline Group. She worked in the cosmetics industry for 20 years, which made her familiar with the beauty market.
In this venture, Qinya Li targeted the younger generation of consumers and used Tiktok and other social media advertising to promote the new brand Colorkey. During the 11.11 Shopping Festival, it earned 160 million yuan in sales from the Tmall omni-channel only. Also in the same year, only 3 years after its founding, Colorkey’s parent company received 400 million in new financing.
Now, Qinya is targeting the Southeast Asian market again. This year, in cooperation with TikTok Vietnam’s top influencer “Yaying“, Colorkey leaped to the first place in the whole category of Tiktok Shop’s cross-border e-commerce Vietnam. In the future, with the globalization of TikTok Shop, Colorkey will extend to more parts of the world.
4. Eiko Hashiba
Why should a woman put her career on hold when she has a baby? This bothered Eiko Hashiba for a long time. Hashiba resigned from her investment banking job at Goldman Sachs in Japan a year after giving birth and became a full-time stay-at-home mom at the age of 23. Work-life balance is what led her to become one of the Asian business owners and found VisasQ in 2012. “Being a woman doesn’t mean there are limits to what you can do,” Hashiba says, “It’s just a label.”
VisasQ provides an environment where any individual can give their expertise in a specific field to the needs of a business. Its innovative business model not only gives companies access to new knowledge, but also provides individuals with new income without having to leave their jobs. Hashiba hopes that no matter what stage of life a person is in, one can continue to work.
In 2020, VisasQ was listed in Tokyo and the share price has quadrupled to a market capitalization of $471 million. In August, VisasQ announced it would acquire Coleman Research Group, a U.S.-based expert network company. This $102 million deal would triple VisasQ’s trading volume to nearly 9 billion yen and potentially add more than 260,000 experts in 190 countries to its network.
Eiko Hashiba was also named to Forbes “Asia’s Power Business Women 2021” for VisasQ’s progressive ideas and success.
5. Marina Budiman
From a bank clerk to the richest woman in Indonesia, Budiman made it! After earning a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from the University of Toronto, Budiman landed a job at the Bank of Bali. While there, she was inspired by a banking project she worked on.
“That was the first time I knew how technology could help business,” Budiman says. She realized that technology would be the big trend of the future as innovation and change were happening faster and faster. Eventually, in 2011, Budiman joined six others to found DCI Indonesia becoming one of the Asian business owners.
DCI Indonesia is now the largest data center operator in Indonesia and is known as the Bill Gates of Indonesia. As a leader in Indonesia’s data center industry, DCI is committed to growing the data center ecosystem in the country. Since its IPO, DCI’s stock has risen approximately 11,000% and is valued at approximately $7 billion. Riding the digital boom in Indonesia, DCI has increased revenue by 81% and profit by 57% compounded over the past three years. With the epidemic of big data, we believe DCI is poised for stronger growth in the future.
In 2021, Marina Budiman was named to Forbes’ “Asia’s Power Business Women 2021” and was ranked 30th on Forbes’ “50 Richest People in Indonesia” list.
6. Xiaochun Cao
Some people lost their jobs during the pandemic, while others seized the opportunity to make a killing during the pandemic. Xiaochun Cao was one of the Asian business owners who chose the opportunity. After graduating from Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Xiaochun did not choose to become a doctor. Instead, she joined 2 pharmaceutical companies, while studying for a master’s degree at Zhejiang University School of Pharmacy and doing clinical trials on drugs. It was during this time that Xiaochun met Dr. Xiaoping Ye, a doctor of immunology at Oxford University. Xiaoping Ye and Cao immediately teamed up and established Tigermed in 2004.
Tigermed has grown to become one of the largest providers of research and clinical trial services in China. The company has a market capitalization of $23 billion. Xiaochun Cao is worth $1.6 billion as of the end of October 2021. Tigermed’s business is booming as global pharmaceutical companies increase investments to discover and commercialize new drugs, including the Covid-19 vaccine. Tigermed has employees in nearly 40 countries, including Australia, South Korea and the U.S. In July 2021, Tigermed contributed 9.8 billion yuan to a 20 billion yuan fund with the Hangzhou government to invest in emerging biopharmaceutical and medical technology startups.
In April 2021, Xiaochun Cao was ranked 2263rd on the 2021 Forbes Global Rich List, with a wealth of $1.3 billion.
7. Meena Ganesh
Many Asian business owners have achieved success after years of working deeply in just one field, but not Meena Ganesh. As a serial entrepreneur, Meena co-founded her first company, Customer Asset, in 2000, but later sold it to ICICI Bank. Since then she has also launched TutorVista, which was acquired by UK publishing giant Pearson. Finally, in July 2013, Meena co-founded Portea Medical, this time she achieved great success.
“I looked at the healthcare space and examined the gaps. While facility-based care sees a lot of investment, and perhaps to some degree in the diagnostic space, the out-of-hospital healthcare does not receive much investment,” Meena says. While people have access to quality hospital facilities for treatment, they face real challenges in finding a home healthcare provider to manage their daily post-operative care. That’s why Meena Ganesh founded Portea Medical.
Portea Medical is India’s largest home healthcare company, dedicated to providing a full range of geriatric, chronic and post-operative care and related healthcare services to patients. The pandemic has brought dramatic changes to the healthcare industry. In the past year, Portea, which works with 70 hospitals and six national diagnostic chains, has partnered with six state governments in India to provide home isolation to nearly 400,000 Covid-19 patients. In the year ending March 2022, Portea Medical revenues are expected to grow 30 percent to 1.8 billion rupees ($25 million), and the company hopes to expand its operations from 22 to 50 cities by the middle of next year.
Meena Ganesh was named a Forbes “2021 Asia’s Power Business Woman” for her contributions to the healthcare industry during the pandemic.
8. Winnie Lee
As the co-founder and COO of a technology company, Winnie Lee is not an engineer at all. Prior to founding Appier, she had 10 years of experience in immunology research, but she was determined to take on a new industry. Winnie says, “Although my expertise is not in AI, my experience in immunology research has made me passionate and good at learning new things, which is exactly what I need to start a new business.”
Appier, one of two unicorn companies in Taiwan, was founded in 2012 to provide a set of machine learning-powered software tools to help sales and marketing, such as identifying customers who are most likely to make repeat purchases. As the only member of the team who could not write coding, she had to cover even the cleaning work with limited resources. Because of this experience, she is the one who understands the division of labor in the company.
For the six months ended June 30, Appier’s revenue grew 38 percent over the same period last year to $52 million. Winnie Lee has helped Appier grow from five employees to more than 500 in 17 offices in cities such as Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. The company is now expanding into Europe and the United States.
9. Ng Gim Choo
Accountant-turned-entrepreneur Ng Gim Choo is the founder and Chairman of The EtonHouse International Education Group. Prior to founding The EtonHouse Group, she was an auditor at Ernst and Young. When Ng lived in England, her oldest daughter E-Ching had been reluctant to go to kindergarten, but when she switched to a new exploratory kindergarten for her child, she was surprised to see that her daughter loved school so much! Out of curiosity, she signed up as a parent volunteer and discovered that this school had a different educational philosophy. “They learn through play and the teachers are very respectful of the children.”
When she moved back to Singapore, Ng tried to find a school for her daughter similar to the one in England, but could never find anything to her liking. A few years later, she started her own education business, and Ng founded the first EtonHouse School on Broderick Road in 1995. Since then, EtonHouse has grown into an international education community offering elementary, middle and high school programs. Today, EtonHouse has 130 schools in 11 countries. Together, these schools provide a high-quality education to more than 20,000 children worldwide.
In addition to being a successful Asian business owner, Ng is a philanthropist. She actively uses her influence to advocate and support children in her community through the EtonHouse Community Fund, a charity she champions, and inspires others with her relentless passion for making learning fun and enjoyable.
10. Deepica Mutyala
Does anyone remember a viral Youtube video from 2015 where Deepica Mutyala covered up her dark circles with red lipstick? Within days, Mutyala was featured on the Today Show and the Dr. Oz Show. Since then, Deepica has been widely featured in several media outlets, including the New York Times, and many brands have started to approach her for collaborations.
As a South Asian, Deepica’s parents gave up everything for immigration just so she could have the best life possible. The experience of Deepica’s upbringing instilled in her the grind and drive. In January 2018, Deepica founded and launched Live Tinted, a digital platform and beauty product line that explores diverse beauty and creates products for “every shade in between.” The platform gives voice and story to underrepresented individuals and introduces them to their personal journeys in beauty, culture and identity.
In May 2019, Live Tinted released their first product, Huestick, a multi-use balm for eyes, lips and cheeks that balances dark circles, dark spots and hyperpigmentation, based on feedback from Mutyala’s 2015 viral video. According to the report by Forbes, Live Tinted’s community-driven product line is “shaking up the beauty standard for 2019.” Huestick won Elle’s Future of Beauty Innovation Award and was called “magic in a pencil” by Good Morning America. On Popular Bio, Deepica Mutyala is one of the richest YouTube stars born in Texas.
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Mengxin Li is a content writer for LadyBossBlogger. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in finance at Johns Hopkins University.
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