What Got Us Started
It all started with Hanawomen Hub, Malaysia’s first open concept working space created especially for Women Startups, Freelancers or Women owned businesses located strategically in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, at Q-Sentral within the vicinity of KL Sentral.
Although it’s a hub catered primarily for Women, it also welcome men that are part of the Women’s Project or guests of public events held at the hub. It is the aspiration of the hub to work alongside ecosystem players and investors that supports safe workplace for women and mothers, and at the same time empowers women with tools and knowledge to be self-sustainable.
What we have discovered
For a few years now, having organized various women get together events — big and small, it’s been discovered that most Women were unable to explore an idea, start or grow a business is due to lack of eco-system support and resources. Resources in this case is funds.
It’s disheartening to learn that even in this era, female businesses and start-ups is still underfunded versus their male peers. Entrepreneurship is unfortunately still dominated by male and male start-ups is often favoured by investors versus female owned.
This has led to the creation of Hanafundme.com, which is specifically designed to support Girls or Women-owned start-ups, businesses, non-profits and side hustles raise funds to kick start or support innovative or impacting ideas, projects or missions by tapping on the Community’s support.
Women Runs Business Differently
Women founders are often careful, they take time to process an information before making decision. Perhaps this is the reason why they are perceived as “less competitive” by investors compared to their male peers, where they are known to be more energetic, forward thinking and action oriented.
Nevertheless, Women start-ups have been known to outperform their male peers but it seems that these facts too is not enough to prove that Women is as capable — if not better. As reported by Entrepreneur.com in 2019, only 2.2% of VC Funding have gone to Women and over decades, VC funding that goes to women founders have not even surpassed 3%, as reported by Crunchbase within the same year itself.
The Creation of Hanafundme.com
Women crowdfunding platform is not something new. Thanks to Kickstarter, the big brother of all crowdfunding platforms, similar new platforms have been created all over the world to meet various campaigns, projects and missions.
And it is through research that we have found out that there were at least two Women Crowdfunding platforms in the U.S and both have successfully served the Women start-ups community there. The ecosystem support coming from successful Women Founders in the U.S is so inspiring that we look forward to replicate the same in Malaysia if not whole of ASEAN.
Hence, Hanafundme.com is created so it too can serve the same purpose for Women in Malaysia/ASEAN region because we understand that not every women in this part of the world is able to raise funds through the conventional approach through conventional approach like borrowing from the banks or financial institutions or giving away equities.
Why Hanafundme?
Being the only Women Crowdfunding platform in Malaysia, we hope to increase the awareness and presence to encourage more Women in the country and within the region to explore, kickstart their ventures and be self-sustain.
Hanafundme aspires to be one of the preferred women crowdfunding platform that represents enterprising and inspiring Women in Malaysian/ASEAN and brings together successful Women (no matter which Country or continent they come from) help support struggling but ambitious Women that was once like them before.
We hope to create that positive ripple effect that reflects the phrase, “When women support each other, incredible things happen”.
Hanafundme also supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to transform communities and the world, in particular the SDG pillars 5, 8, 9 and 10.
Beta launched on 18 March 2020
Kick started the Beta launch on 18 March 2020 with 7 pioneer Women campaigners on board. All of them have gone through a month of coaching (from zero knowledge to kick start & fundraise) to share their dream ventures with the public with hope to materialize their dream ventures. It is our dream to be able to do our part to encourage Women explore their dreams and mission, and to be part of their success journey.
Doing our part amidst the COVID19 pandemic
Amidst the global pandemic COVID19 that hits many recently, in particular the small business owners with business commitments (paying bills, rent and staff salaries). We feel the need to do something to alleviate the shortcomings.
Although the platform caters to Women, it is now open to ALL that needed help to go through the challenges with hope to help them sustain & stay afloat.
Simply upload a campaign and mark the campaign with “APPEAL (COVID19)” in the Category column to differentiate the campaign.
Since Hanafundme does not take ANY equity or offer loan money, it encourages business owners to offer products or services in return for the monetary support. Kind of like selling products & services in advance and customers/supporters can redeem or receive them later when the pandemic subsides.
Unlike E-commerce platform that only sells products and services online. Hanafundme helps you share your story and reach out to the community. It is our hope that this small act will bring impact.
Our biggest campaign since launch to date (still on-going) is the Appeal Covid19 campaign where we help raise funds for Tawau Hospital in Sabah that is in dire need of protective gear supplies.
Looking At The Bright Side
We launched the Beta at an inopportune time – just when the world is hit with Covid19. Hence, we weren’t able to launch it ceremoniously although we look forward to.
Even the focus now is shifted towards Covid19 and how the world is coping with it. But we hope to be an alternative solution for those that needed the platform to help them in this challenging time.