Hema Vallabh

Hema Vallabh is a South-african engineer, turned entrepreneur, turned investor. Hema is a founding partner at Five35 Ventures, a pan-African VC fund investing in women in tech. She is also the co-founder & CEO of WomHub, a boutique pan-African incubator and the first co-working space for female-founders in STEM in Africa.

Quotes

• It was a very male dominated space so I was one of few females in my class, but I had the mindset that I wanted to do something about that instead of complaining about it. I wanted to make changes so I created a platform for female engineers to come together and discuss things and, from this, WomEng was born. After WomEng’s success, I later founded the spinout WomHub which is more of a social enterprise and took the company into an entrepreneurship space. [1]

• Entrepreneurship is about seeing a problem and wanting to do something about it. It’s about having a vision and painting the world how you’d want it to look, and then dedicating yourself to making that a reality. [2]

• I realised my idea was good enough when I saw the first girl graduate from the WomEng. By the time I left my job, I had reached 10000 girls in STEM, so I saw that there was a clear market. Organisations were willing to impart money in my idea so this made me realise how necessary it was. [3]

• Resilience because it’s important to have a thick skin and the ability to bounce back. [4]

• Failure is not a bad thing so don’t be afraid of failure. Also, determination is key as you need to have a clear vision, and this means knowing your why and what motivates you. [5]

• There’s no shame is making money because the more you make, the more good you can do. [6]

• The biggest lesson is owning your worth and knowing your value. [7]

• I also faced some personal challenges because when you believe so deeply in an idea it can scare other people, but it’s okay if they don’t get the vision. You can’t be everything to everyone. As a female in particular, the world is not used to trail brazing confident women who are financially secure and are willing to take charge. [8]

• Engineering is hard enough but being one of few women of colour makes it so much harder. I’ve seen females drop out because of discrimination. That’s why I was so motivated to kickstart this organisation because I want to see changes and I want to make sure other women don’t have to go through the same struggles that I did. [9]

• I know it’s cliché but the world is yours for the taking. Another key factor is to lift as you rise because that’s the only way that it will become normal for females to be in entrepreneurial roles. [10]