Ketty Lie, who has held management and strategic positions at Leapfrog Investments and Vriens & Partners, founded ErudiFi in 2020. The technology company is focused on making education affordable in Southeast Asia.
In Feb 2021, Danacita, a student loan platform and a subsidiary of ErudiFi, announced the raising of $5 million in a Series A round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures and Qualgro. Danacita recorded a three-fold growth in financing to students in 2020.
Ketty Lie was among the 12 women (co-)founders interviewed for the DealStreetAsia Research & Analytics report Women in Startups: The SE Asia Edition. She shared her experience as a woman entrepreneur. Edited excerpts:
How has your fundraising journey been, and do you think it’s hard to raise funding as a woman co-founder?
I think, as a startup fundraising is always constant and we are grateful for closing. In terms of being a female co-founder, I think I’m really grateful for the co-founding team that I am working with, and it’s really them pushing through with the fundraising. It’s never a one-person thing. So for us, it’s always a journey that we’ve been very grateful for. We have a lot of work ahead, but yeah, good stuff so far.
How long did it take you to get your first funding?
I think we’re always looking at fundraising. Fundamentally, it’s more about building relationships and knowing that you’re coming in as part of our family. So, it’s really building relationships and then getting the right group of people to work on this problem together.
Were you focused on delivering the right product, or were you focused on fundraising, or both?
It’s always balancing both. Don’t shy away from sort of feeling like: that is not a sector you can play. Even if you don’t come from a technology background, Tessa (co-founder of Xendit) says, there are a lot of companies we can learn from.
To read more such interviews and access data like the share of capital that flowed to women-led startups in SE Asia, refer to our Research & Analytics report.
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