Podium offers a protected area for girls as they navigate main milestones
Once we take into consideration the time period “trendy girl,” some may image characters like Miranda Priestly from The Satan Wears Prada: career-driven, bold, and prepared to sacrifice relationships to remain on high.
However after I met Alka Gupta and Mai Vo, they supplied a far much less restrictive definition: a contemporary girl is somebody who will get to decide on who she needs to be.
“It’s actually not that you need to work or that you need to be a mum. You possibly can don’t have any children. You possibly can don’t have any profession. So long as that’s your alternative,” shared Mai.
That concept stayed with me all through our hour-long dialog—and it’s the identical precept that led the pair to launch Podium in 2023, a membership-based group platform constructed to assist ladies really feel supported as they navigate main life milestones.
Podium hosts quite a lot of occasions for girls
Podium presently serves ladies of their late 20s to early 40s, a stage of life the place there’s extra urgency surrounding selections on careers, relationships, and household. The platform organises occasions from informal gatherings to masterclasses on subjects like cash administration, ladies’s well being, and even abroad retreats.
One in every of its core objectives is to assist ladies construct stronger networks via weak ties: individuals you will not be near, however who can nonetheless supply worthwhile views and help.
“Girls are sometimes hesitant to ask for assist, particularly from different ladies, as a result of we don’t need to seem to be we now have an agenda,” shared Alka. “We need to normalise that.”
Membership prices S$100 per quarter or S$300 yearly, with occasions priced individually at S$10–S$30. Members can select and pay for the periods they need to attend.
To affix, candidates full a 25-question questionnaire and are verified through LinkedIn. Whereas it might sound extreme, Mai careworn that the method is concentrated on intentionality relatively than exclusivity.
“There have been solely two cases the place we stated no,” Mai defined, although she didn’t go into element. “Both we referred them elsewhere, or saved them in thoughts for when the timing was proper.”
Throughout the platform, Podium additionally provides one-to-one matching to attach members with shared objectives. “Operationally, it was loopy, however we ended up matching over 100 teams final yr,” Mai stated.
To take care of a snug setting, members aren’t allowed to promote their services or products inside the group.
It was based from the founders’ private experiences
When Podium launched its membership, it onboarded 200 members nearly instantly via phrase of mouth. The idea clearly resonated with ladies, reflecting experiences that the founders themselves had confronted many instances—moments of isolation, uncertainty, or the necessity for steerage at key life phases.
For Alka Gupta, these experiences have been formed by a fast-moving profession. Born and raised in an educational household in Delhi, India, Alka moved rapidly throughout roles within the startup world, from e-commerce in India to Seize in Indonesia, earlier than taking up a management place there at fintech agency BukuWarung.
On the agency, she helped increase US$80 million and scale the platform to almost seven million customers. However after seven years of nonstop development, Alka discovered herself burnt out.
She moved to Bali, Indonesia, to pause and reassess her subsequent steps. By teaching and remedy, she realised she wished to help ladies who have been navigating comparable profession trajectories.
“Within the final 10 years, I’ve at all times been the youngest and solely feminine within the room, because of my Pc Science diploma and my fintech background, [and] I felt an absence of like-minded individuals who had these experiences,”
Mai Vo’s journey took a special form. Born in Germany to a Vietnamese household, she discovered herself continually rebuilding group as she moved between international locations. Alongside the best way, she co-founded teams equivalent to DevelopHer in London for girls in tech, and Abroad Vietnamese to attach Vietnamese professionals globally.
On the identical time, Mai spent eight years in huge tech, most notably at Google. However after getting married in her 30s, her priorities started to shift. For the primary time, she discovered herself questioning what success meant past the company ladder.
She finally left Google to affix teaching startup Hupo, however discovered it troublesome to fulfill friends navigating an identical transition. That acquainted sense of isolation lingered—and remained unresolved.
Mai and Alka have been later launched via mutual connections and rapidly realised they shared the identical objective: to create an area the place ladies might discover group, assets, and help via key life phases. And with that, Podium was launched in 2023.
Rising steadily with intention
Whereas women-led communities aren’t new, Mai shared that many of those are non-profit organisations and are designed to fulfill a slim set of wants at a selected life stage. Podium, alternatively, was constructed to evolve alongside its members.
Alka recalled how daunting her first board assembly at 27 had felt. On the time, she reached out to different ladies leaders in Large Tech through LinkedIn, hoping to search out steerage from these with comparable experiences. However she rapidly realised that their recommendation didn’t totally resonate, revealing a niche in peer alignment that Podium now goals to fill.
“Profession-wise, at any time when you’re going via one thing totally different, the very first thing you permit behind is your friends, as a result of most of them are following a norm that they’re aware of,” she defined.
That’s why the founders selected to function Podium as a for-profit enterprise: it permits them to scale and help extra ladies navigating unconventional paths, from new moms beginning their very own companies to Singaporean ladies getting back from abroad research searching for connections, whereas adapting to their evolving wants.
Since launch, Podium has grown to over 400 members, achieved common month-on-month development of 20%, and expanded its workforce from two to seven. In Nov 2025, it additionally closed an oversubscribed six-figure funding spherical led by Accelerating Asia.
Mai and Alka defined that the extra funds are devoted to supporting Podium’s greater ambitions, which embody launching their very own cell app for members and introducing extra tech into their options to offer extra seamless interactions and quicker, smarter matching.
Past Singapore, the founders hope to deliver Podium to international city hubs to fulfill ladies wherever they’re. “I don’t assume ladies at the moment lack talent,” Alka stated. “It’s about creating sufficient alternatives to resolve significant issues.”
All in all, Podium doesn’t intention to inform ladies who to turn out to be: it’s about giving them the area to decide on to construct and develop their very own path, on their very own phrases.
- Be taught extra about Podium right here.
- Learn extra tales we’ve written on Singaporean companies right here.
Featured Picture Credit score: Podium, Medha Thakkar through LinkedIn
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