“Our culture has countless strict gender roles, one of which is that men manage money and women don’t,” Aashka Piprottar, the founder of Boss Betis, told Wealthy Wolfe’s Parween Mander over email. “So while men get to discuss money openly and proudly, women, if they ever discuss it, do so in hushed, quick voices.”

Those gender roles convinced Aashka from a young age “that I was just destined to be ‘bad with money’ and I would just have to rely on my father — and then in the future, probably my husband — to manage the money for me,” she adds. 

Boss Betis is a community-based platform to destigmatize the conversation around money, specifically the unique challenges faced by desi women. The platform wants to instill that financial freedom and literacy are essential to women’s empowerment. 

While Wealthy Wolfe is a digital financial coaching & education platform for women of color from immigrant upbringings specifically.

Aashka also told Parween that she’s unlearned the harmful money narratives of her childhood through working in the wealth management and financial wellness space.

By 27, Parween had a $150,000 net worth, so she could support herself and her parents without feeling burdened. She advised that we must put on our financial oxygen masks first, as well as to start a  “Parent fund” account to save money for our families in case they need it, “This is a way to set a financial boundary so that you don’t feel resentful or sabotaged if they require funds from you.” Parween wrote on Business Insider.

Understanding the complexity of the South Asian culture, Parween has helped one of her clients to set up strategic savings accounts to separate her money, while still contributing funds when her client’s parents asked for it.

Parween affirms that cultural expectations and narratives play a huge role in their ability as South Asian women to make different decisions, especially when it comes to their money and building wealth. 

Kash Feng, co-founder and CEO of Omakase Restaurant Group, moved to the Bay Area at age 18. He was the only child of factory workers, so when he moved to the U.S. in 1999 with his buddies, he borrowed $20,000 from relatives and friends, promising to return them.

Feng started working as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant in the East Bay, and was quickly promoted to busboy. He progressed through various industrial occupations, frequently juggling three jobs at once, while also taking English classes.

In 2007, he met Jackson Yu, who eventually became his business partner and executive chef of Omakase sushi restaurant. Like Feng, Yu also had modest beginnings. At 16, he and his parents left China and moved to the Bay Area. 

Yu was a Japanese buffet busboy and gas boy on his days off. He was once asked to help out when the sushi chef cut his fingers one day. Yu then became so skilled that he could manually shape 2,000 identically sized sushi rice balls per day. Other sushi establishments took notice of this, including the well-known Ebisu in the Sunset, where he worked for five years to master sushi making.

They were both 26 when they decided to start their own restaurant business, Live Sushi, pooling all their savings and borrowing from relatives. Their restaurant was a hit from the beginning. Eventually, they were able to pay off all their loans, and the rest is history.

Now, Omakase Restaurant Group is an ever-growing empire, with different establishments all over San Francisco.

Justine Tiu, a former Google Classroom software engineer, started crocheting to unwind after work. After realizing its appeal, she and her ex-Wall Street director husband, Adrian Zhang, launched The Woobles, a crochet kit company.

On Friday’s “Shark Tank,” the two explained the hobby’s vast appeal. The firm made $3.1 million last year and $5.3 million since launching two years ago.

All five Sharks quickly decided they wanted a piece of the company, and they showed they were willing to betray their business partners to get it.

The Woobles is a crafting kit company that offers patterns, step-by-step video tutorials, and all the materials needed to do amigurumi crochet, a Japanese fiber art form, even if you are a complete beginner. Once your kit arrives with all the materials, a login code gives you step-by-step written and video instructions to make your craft and helpful hints when you get stuck.

Tiu and Zhang ultimately received a $450,000 investment offer from sharks Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. In exchange, the company, which at the time of filming was on pace to generate $7 million in yearly sales, gave Cuban and Grenier a split of 6% equity.