What Helps Women Entrepreneurs Globally Scale Their Businesses?
by EY and Standard Chartered Bank
Women entrepreneurs are a powerful economic force in Asia-Pacific. The United Nations estimates that the Asia-Pacific economy would earn an additional $89 billion annually if women were able to achieve their full economic potential.1 East Asia alone is home to nearly six million women-owned small businesses. In economies such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, women-owned businesses are increasing in number and growing at fast rates.
However, evidence suggests that the region’s women entrepreneurs tend to lead smaller enterprises than men. Only a small fraction break USD$1 million in revenue. It seems that women entrepreneurs are hitting hurdles in their growth journeys that prevent them from scaling their businesses globally.
As leading supporters of Asia-Pacific’s women entrepreneurs, EY and Standard Chartered Bank have come together to explore what these hurdles might be and how to help women entrepreneurs overcome them to accelerate growth.
According to a study of EY North America Entrepreneurial Winning Women alumni, successful entrepreneurs — men and women — exhibit five key behaviors that help them successfully scale to become market leaders:
- Think big and be bold
- Build a public profile
- Spend more time working on the business, rather than in it
- Establish key advisory networks
- Evaluate financing for expansion
So we embarked on a study to test which of these behaviors are being practiced by women entrepreneurs in Asia-Pacific — and which might be absent, hampering their progress. This report sets out our findings. We hope it helps women entrepreneurs in the region to tackle crucial inflection points in their growth journeys and accelerate the growth of their businesses.
We would like to thank all of our survey participants for their time, ideas and insights.
Annette Kimmitt & Anna Marrs
