Geek, dancer, CEO of The New Savvy, and financial expert, Anna Vanessa Haotanto is making a name for herself as one of the top female entrepreneurs in the region.
Her startup is making waves in the financial industry, as a service targeted at women, and improving their financial capabilities. Her business, The New Savvy, focuses on investments and is a career platform for women. They provide education, media, and organise conferences.
When Anna isn’t at her desk, you can find her coding, a newly learned skill, or exploring the food scene in whatever country she happens to be in. She’s also fluent in three languages and used to be a dancer.
Read more about her journey below.
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Sell us your company/service in 300 words?
The New Savvy is Asia’s leading financial, investments and career platform for women. Our bold vision is to empower 100 million women to make smarter financial decisions. We deliver high-quality content through education, media, and conferences.
The New Savvy has 200,000 monthly page views, 60,000 email subscribers and has been featured in Forbes, CNBC, Business Insider, Reuters, Channel News Asia, R29, Fast Company, The Straits Times, Yahoo, The Peak among others.
Despite advancing in our career and earning more, women lack confidence in financial matters. 41% do not invest or manage their money. There is a lack of media outlets that engage women financially.
The New Savvy uses simplified, relevant language to help women make smarter decisions. We cover 35 topics ranging from asset classes, savings, buying property, marriage, fashion, health among others. We want to make money fun for women and promote better financial habits.
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What is stopping you from having the largest company in the world?
Time, money and resources! We are expanding rapidly across Asia, launching in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia.
We will always focus on valuable content and insights. The New Savvy doesn’t do trending topics as we feel that there are others that do it better. We focus on our expertise: finance, women, and empowerment.
We are also developing bite-sized financial online courses and looking at holding workshops for financial education every two months.
We plan to hold our annual The Future is Female conference – a women-only personal finance, career, and lifestyle conference.
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If you could change one thing about the tech industry in Southeast Asia, what would it be?
Increasing the visibility of women in tech, whether they’re entrepreneurs, or work for corporations or regulators.
I advocate gender equality in the sense of offering equal opportunities to both genders and rendering the same amount of respect to both genders in both professional and social contexts.
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Name one person in the region, who is making a difference in Technology?
Jack Ma! I love Alibaba and Alipay and I think they are both game changers.
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What would you want people to remember you for, 100 years from now?
My biggest dream is to do microfinance. I am a firm believer in education and empowering people. With the right kind of resources, anyone is capable of lifting themselves out of poverty. With proper financial access and education, any individuals hold the power to create an opportunity for themselves and others.
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About Anna
Anna Haotanto is the CEO of The New Savvy. Anna is the President of the Singapore Management University Women Alumni. She is part of the founding committee of the Singapore FinTech Association and heads the Women In FinTech and Partnership committee.
She is passionate about finance, education, women empowerment and children’s issues.Anna s story is featured on Millionaire Minds on Channel NewsAsia. She is the host for Channel NewsAsia for Challenge Tomorrow, a FinTech documentary.
Anna was awarded “Her Times Youth Award” at the Rising50 Women Empowerment Gala, organised by the Indonesian Embassy of Singapore. The award was presented by His Excellency Ngurah Swajaya. She is part of LinkedIn Power Profiles 2017 for founders. She was nominated and selected for FORTUNE Most Powerful Women conference in 2017, 2016 (Asia) and 2015 (San Francisco, Next Gen).
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Views expressed by the interviewee are not necessarily shared by Tech Collective. Some minimal editing is done for clarity’s sake.
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