The base for any business growth is a strong professional network. This is especially crucial in Southeast Asia, where capital gaps persist. According to the 2025 DealStreetAsia Funding Review on Women Founders in Southeast Asia, women entrepreneurs secured just 3.2% of total equity funding in the region in 2025, disproportionately smaller than their male counterparts.

To stay ahead of the playing field, business connections, professional networks and partnerships are key for women-led businesses to stay ahead.

This is why UOB FinLab has built a regional ecosystem of over 40,000 professionals across ASEAN. This intentionally designed community connects women entrepreneurs with access to the right partners, cross-border opportunities, and collective learning to turn their local successes into regional footprints.

We are actively expanding our community across ASEAN to fuel the  robust appetite for overseas expansion across the region. In Vietnam, we spotlighted female innovators with a major showcase for women business leaders in AI on 15 July 2026. Similarly, Thailand and Indonesia launched a series of women business programmes to uplift and help women entrepreneurs broaden their insights, connect with peers, and access digital tools and guidance to embrace business growth and development.

“It is important to constantly gain knowledge through upskilling and have a strong ecosystem to unlock new business touchpoints”, shares Lim Shin Ee, Managing Director, PrintnGift and a participant of the UOB SME Elevate Programme.

Shin Ee participated in Women in Business and the SME Elevate Programme, completing courses such as The Art of Persuasion and TikTok Masterclass.

Through these programmes, she gained practical skills in communication, digital marketing, and social media engagement. This has enabled PrintnGift to strengthen its marketing approach, particularly in leveraging short-form content and persuasive messaging to better engage customers, enhance brand visibility, and drive business growth in the competitive corporate gifting space.

As a female founder navigating today’s competitive landscape, Shin Ee highlights that the access to one-on-one mentorship and close collaboration with fellow womenpreneurs creates an invaluable sounding board. For her, the ecosystem provided far more than just networking; it established a continuous learning community that allowed her to constantly upskill, adopt new technologies, and confidently push her business into the next stage of growth.

This transformative impact is echoed by Sydney Ho, Founder of Mega Collective and a two-year consecutive member of the community. For Sydney, the true value of the ecosystem lies in collective learning and shared resilience. “We find support in one another”, she notes, highlighting how invaluable it is “to be exposed to different perspectives and the training”. Beyond the supportive network, Sydney also leveraged new digital skills she gained to adopt Xero accounting software, successfully automating manual workflows and significantly improving her operational efficiency.