When it comes to closing the gender equality gap in entrepreneurship, many barriers remain to be addressed. However, female entrepreneurs in the startup industry are now rising and have been taking center stage.

Fortune recently released a list of the 15 Most Powerful Women in Startups based on PitchBook valuation data. 

Eight women on the list are notable Asian women who are either founders of highly valued startups where they hold important jobs or chief executives of highly valued firms.

Without further ado, here are the most powerful women in charge of the most valuable private companies in the world today.

 

Melanie Perkins

Cofounder and CEO, Canva

Valuation: $26 billion

The Malaysian-Austrailian cofounder and CEO of design software maker Canva was valued at $40 billion in 2021, which makes it the highest-valued female-founded startup in the world. Launching their new office product, the company is ready to take on Microsoft and Google.

 

Divya Gokulnath

Cofounder and director, Byju’s

Valuation: $22 billion

Gokulnath cofounded India’s most valuable startup, Byju’s. The firm’s aim is to make learning engaging and effective by leveraging deep pedagogy and cutting edge technology.

 

Miranda Qu

Cofounder and president, Xiaohongshu

Valuation: $20 billion

Based in Shanghai, the social e-commerce app Xiaohongshu (translation: “Little Red Book”) has been key to the rise of experiential shopping in China. The innovative platform integrates the authentic content shared by its community with commerce, quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations for making lifestyle decisions.

 

Ruchi Kalra

Cofounder and CFO, OfBusiness; cofounder and CEO, Oxyzo

Valuations: $5 billion (OfBusiness); $1 billion (Oxyzo)

Kalra along with her husband Asish Mohapatra, cofounded the carbon management business OfBusiness and the digital lender Oxyzo. OfBusiness provides India’s SMEs access to cash flow-based financing for buying raw materials through its NBFC ‘Oxyzo Financial Services’.

 

Adi Tatarko

Cofounder and CEO, Houzz

Valuation: $4 billion

The Israeli-American cofounder and CEO started the home remodeling and design platform where people can browse and save beautiful photos of inspiring home, as well as find and hire the right design and construction professionals.

 

Eynat Guez

Cofounder and CEO, Papaya Global

Valuation: $3.7 billion

Papaya Global is a payroll platform trusted across 160+ countries and all types of employment. Based in Israel, Guez cofounded the startup after a long career in global workforce management.

 

April Koh

Cofounder and CEO, Spring Health

Valuation: $2 billion

Koh became the youngest woman to run a multibillion-dollar company when the startup hit its $2 billion valuation in 2021. With the mission to eliminate every barrier to mental health, Spring Health offers mental health care services as an employer-provided health benefit.

 

Jinglan Wang

Cofounder and CEO, Optimism

Valuation: $1.7 billion

Optimism is an Ethereum-based decentralized infrastructure platform that allows for instant transactions and scalable smart contracts.The company valued at $1.7 billion as it worked to scale Ethereum.

Natalie Naudus’ voice actor journey began when she realized that narrating audiobooks could be a promising career option. She found that audiobooks were one of the fastest-growing areas of content creation and that most of them were recorded by voice actors in high-quality at-home studios. 

The mother of two decided to pursue it as a new career because she believed that many aspects of the genre she cherished as a classical singer could be incorporated into this new line of work. She now earns six figures annually.

Natalie’s husband helped her set up a home studio. A platform called ACX, which connects narrators with authors, agents, and publishers, gave her her first book job. To make her name and voice more well-known within the community, she started going to events related to book narration. 

During the 2020 pandemic, she decided to share snippets of her book narrator life on Tiktok and Instagram. She wishes others could appreciate this profession as much as she does. This exposure increased her popularity and fan base. Book gigs from publishers who wanted to hire her to publish her works also began to flood in. With this strong online presence, she acknowledged it as one of the most important decisions she has ever made for her professional advancement.

Currently, she still manages to put in a productive 40 hours a week between recording, administrative duties and reading up on material for her next book. Major publishers typically offer her a starting rate of $225 per finished audio hour. 

After three years as a voice actor, she finally reached the six-figure mark in earnings and enabled her to purchase the land for their mountaintop home, as well as upgrade her recording booth.

Natalie had recorded almost 400 books over five years. She is also an award-winning audiobook narrator of more than 250 titles.  Her story shows that taking a chance on a new career path can pay off in ways one never expects.– “It was a difficult decision to give up my opera dreams. But I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t left it behind and taken this chance.” she tells CNBC’s Make It.

Plastic pollution harms our planet and health, but thankfully, companies like Copenhagen Cartel are combating this environmental problem by converting lost or abandoned fishing nets into bikinis with a modern twist on an ancient textile tradition.

Copenhagen Cartel’s founder and ocean lover, Katrine Lee Larsen, was motivated to help mitigate the adverse effects of plastic use and came up with a “brilliant solution” destined to become a global superstar.

Launched in 2019, Copenhagen Cartel has produced swimwear and athletic wear from ocean waste plastic. The deadly ‘ghost nets’ that would otherwise waste away in the ocean and kill countless marine life can be put to good use in this way. Compared to making brand-new nylon, Copenhagen Cartel’s manufacturing process uses less energy and resources.

Larsen views each day as a fresh challenge while launching her own company. Moreover, as a true nature lover, she has been guided and helped by her purpose. She feels the entrepreneurial world is dominated by masculine values that leave little room for feelings and higher goals. However, her experience has shown that a focused, emotional strategy can be very beneficial. She believes a new era of entrepreneurs will emerge due to shifting to a mindset that values meaning over financial gain.

Larsen is an entrepreneur herself, and she has been through the experience of seeing the ocean being depleted of its resources. Despite this, she knows that there is still room for change, which drives her to continue to assist the environment and natural resources.

Indian American Ann Mukherjee CEO and chairman of Pernod Ricard, has been a model for success and women’s empowerment. At 56 years old, she is currently managing the world’s second-largest seller of wine and spirits and is also renowned for top-shelf liquor brands such as Absolut, Jameson, and Malibu. In an industry dominated by men, she is the first woman of color to hold the highest position for alcoholic beverage brands.

As soon as she assumed the position of CEO in 2019, she realized that there was a stereotype rooted in an exaggerated machismo of being a self-confident leader. After giving it some thought, she concluded that those beliefs were not only completely false but also destructive, so she chose to disregard them. 

Mukherjee thought the most challenging part of being a CEO was knowing when to ask for help or admit you couldn’t do it alone. She believes it is essential for a leader to accurately understand herself and her people and then learn from them. Although confident in her abilities, she also recognizes the importance of showing humility and honesty.

She also reveals how her failure became the key to her success. She has become more resilient because she has learned to change course when necessary and take advantage of setbacks to advance. And while also acknowledging her drawbacks, she stresses the value of accepting failures. 

Her one piece of advice for anyone just starting in their career is, “Do not worry about fitting in, and do not be afraid to speak up, because when you have confidence in yourself, anything is possible,” she shared with CNBC’s Make It.

Mukherjee is well aware that to be an effective leader, she must first be able to love herself without condition, taking into account all of her attributes, including her strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And with that comes the realization that knowing one’s shortcomings can better help one deal with and overcome those. This is the only way for her to achieve genuine personal and professional development.