Podium provides a safe space for women as they navigate major milestones
When we think about the term “modern woman,” some might picture characters like Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada: career-driven, ambitious, and willing to sacrifice relationships to stay on top.
But when I met Alka Gupta and Mai Vo, they offered a far less restrictive definition: a modern woman is someone who gets to choose who she wants to be.
“It’s really not that you have to work or that you have to be a mum. You can have no kids. You can have no career. As long as that’s your choice,” shared Mai.
That idea stayed with me throughout our hour-long conversation—and it’s the same principle that led the pair to launch Podium in 2023, a membership-based community platform built to help women feel supported as they navigate major life milestones.
Podium hosts a variety of events for women
Podium currently serves women in their late 20s to early 40s, a stage of life where there’s more urgency surrounding decisions on careers, relationships, and family. The platform organises events from casual gatherings to masterclasses on topics like money management, women’s health, and even overseas retreats.
One of its core goals is to help women build stronger networks through weak ties: people you may not be close to, but who can still offer valuable perspectives and support.
“Women are often hesitant to ask for help, especially from other women, because we don’t want to seem like we have an agenda,” shared Alka. “We want to normalise that.”
Membership costs S$100 per quarter or S$300 annually, with events priced separately at S$10–S$30. Members can choose and pay for the sessions they want to attend.
To join, applicants complete a 25-question questionnaire and are verified via LinkedIn. While it might seem excessive, Mai stressed that the process is focused on intentionality rather than exclusivity.
“There were only two instances where we said no,” Mai explained, though she did not go into detail. “Either we referred them elsewhere, or kept them in mind for when the timing was right.”
Within the platform, Podium also offers one-to-one matching to connect members with shared goals. “Operationally, it was crazy, but we ended up matching over 100 groups last year,” Mai said.
To maintain a comfortable environment, members are not allowed to sell their products or services within the community.
It was founded from the founders’ personal experiences
When Podium launched its membership, it onboarded 200 members almost immediately through word of mouth. The concept clearly resonated with women, reflecting experiences that the founders themselves had faced many times—moments of isolation, uncertainty, or the need for guidance at key life stages.
For Alka Gupta, those experiences were shaped by a fast-moving career. Born and raised in an academic family in Delhi, India, Alka moved quickly across roles in the startup world, from e-commerce in India to Grab in Indonesia, before taking on a leadership position there at fintech firm BukuWarung.
At the firm, she helped raise US$80 million and scale the platform to nearly seven million users. But after seven years of nonstop growth, Alka found herself burnt out.
She moved to Bali, Indonesia, to pause and reassess her next steps. Through coaching and therapy, she realised she wanted to support women who were navigating similar career trajectories.
“In the last 10 years, I’ve always been the youngest and only female in the room, thanks to my Computer Science degree and my fintech background, [and] I felt an absence of like-minded people who had these experiences,”
Mai Vo’s journey took a different shape. Born in Germany to a Vietnamese family, she found herself constantly rebuilding community as she moved between countries. Along the way, she co-founded groups such as DevelopHer in London for women in tech, and Overseas Vietnamese to connect Vietnamese professionals globally.
At the same time, Mai spent eight years in big tech, most notably at Google. But after getting married in her 30s, her priorities began to shift. For the first time, she found herself questioning what success meant beyond the corporate ladder.
She eventually left Google to join coaching startup Hupo, but found it difficult to meet peers navigating a similar transition. That familiar sense of isolation lingered—and remained unresolved.
Mai and Alka were later introduced through mutual connections and quickly realised they shared the same goal: to create a space where women could find community, resources, and support through key life stages. And with that, Podium was launched in 2023.
Growing steadily with intention
While women-led communities are not new, Mai shared that many of these are non-profit organisations and are designed to meet a narrow set of needs at a specific life stage. Podium, on the other hand, was built to evolve alongside its members.
Alka recalled how daunting her first board meeting at 27 had felt. At the time, she reached out to other women leaders in Big Tech via LinkedIn, hoping to find guidance from those with similar experiences. But she quickly realised that their advice didn’t fully resonate, revealing a gap in peer alignment that Podium now aims to fill.
“Career-wise, whenever you are going through something different, the first thing you leave behind is your peers, because most of them are following a norm that they are familiar with,” she explained.
That’s why the founders chose to operate Podium as a for-profit business: it allows them to scale and support more women navigating unconventional paths, from new mothers starting their own businesses to Singaporean women returning from overseas studies seeking connections, while adapting to their evolving needs.
Since launch, Podium has grown to over 400 members, achieved average month-on-month growth of 20%, and expanded its team from two to seven. In Nov 2025, it also closed an oversubscribed six-figure funding round led by Accelerating Asia.
Mai and Alka explained that the additional funds are dedicated to supporting Podium’s bigger ambitions, which include launching their own mobile app for members and introducing more tech into their solutions to provide more seamless interactions and faster, smarter matching.
Beyond Singapore, the founders hope to bring Podium to global urban hubs to meet women wherever they are. “I don’t think women today lack skill,” Alka said. “It’s about creating enough opportunities to solve meaningful problems.”
All in all, Podium doesn’t aim to tell women who to become: it’s about giving them the space to choose to build and grow their own path, on their own terms.
Featured Image Credit: Podium, Medha Thakkar via LinkedIn
