Fertile ground

Both the overall global winner and the winners of the China event also won a trip to Singapore to participate in the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology's Women in Tech Conference which ran from Sept 17 to 20.

She Loves Tech is a global initiative, showcasing the convergence of the latest trends in technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and the opportunities it creates for women.

According to Tan, their goal is to provide a platform for international and Chinese tech companies, investors, entrepreneurs, startups and consumers to come together to promote technology for women-and, perhaps most importantly, women in technology.

The She Loves Tech International Conference was held on the same day, focusing on AI and emerging technologies.

"In 2017, female-led startups raised about $1.5 billion, while male-led around $58.2 billion-nearly 40 times that of the females' funding," Tan told the conference. "However," she notes, "for the investment needs of the market's current female-led startups, there remains a funding gap of around $300 billion."

Therefore, Tan announced that she is to establish the first Asian venture-capital fund for women, aiming to help female entrepreneurs deal with the difficulties of securing financing.

"That's my step forward in 2018. We need to dream first before we can make our dreams come true," says Tan.

Lesly Goh, CTO of the World Bank, also gave an impassioned speech at the conference, sharing her own experiences and struggles.

"I was born a girl and was abandoned by my mom. Life was not easy for a girl like me," says Goh. "The only way to get myself out of my difficulties was education."

Goh moved to the United States with only 25 cents in her pocket and she earned a scholarship in computer science, which brought her to the world of technology.

Besides leading the World Bank's digitalization drive and ensuring that the best technologies are on hand to solve the world's biggest development challenges, Goh has a personal mission, "to leverage technology to empower women and girls in the developing world".

Joining the world of science also changed Kang's life. She studied piano at an affiliated middle school of Sichuan Conservatory of Music, and taught herself mathematics and science courses, because she enjoyed the subjects so much.

When she applied for college in the US, she applied for both piano and engineering, and she got an offer to study the latter at the University of Pittsburgh. She then studied for her master's degree in bioengineering at Columbia University and her MBA at Cornell.

She co-founded Mira in 2015, and the company now has offices in both Hangzhou of Zhejiang province and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company is made up of a team of 36, which boasts PhDs in physics, biomedicine, immunology and medicine.

Currently all hormone-based fertility trackers on the market estimate ovulation based on a hard hormone threshold, a population average. According to Kang, Mira is the only personalized ovulation monitoring system that measures the actual hormone concentration of each woman, just like in a hospital lab.

"I want a product that can be held in one hand," says Kang.

Their first product is now available in the US and will be introduced to the Chinese market next year. Mira plans to continue to grow its comprehensive women's health home monitoring platform to also include testing and analysis for ovarian reserves, fetal health, miscarriage risk, the menopause and hormone imbalances.

"We have the power to provide the tools for people to easily understand and take charge of their health, and championing at-home women's health analysis is just the beginning," she explains.

Kang says Mira plans to expand the system's AI-powered analysis and tracking capabilities into chronic disease testing and general wellness monitoring.

In September, Mira also competed in TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield, the world's pre-eminent startup competition in the US, and managed to finish in the top 20.

"It's said that 92 percent of the investment at Silicon Valley is given to men, but women entrepreneurs are way more than 8 percent of the market," observes Kang.

"Most women may not be as confident as men when pitching their projects, but if we don't step up to fight for more chances, we may lose our opportunities."

Contact the writer at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn