The W20 Meeting has just concluded in China’s northwestern city of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. One of the themes for this year was the role of women in the digital economy. Our reporter Liu Yang met with one woman who has already seized great opportunities in this golden era for start-ups.
From an artist to the co-founder of a company called “Truck Alliance”. Geng Xiao graduated with an arts major from a top ranking college, but chose to live and work in a manner quite different from most of her classmates.
"I think that the things I am doing now are very valuable, especially as our Truck Alliance has brought tremendous changes to the logistic industry and to truck driver themselves. I feel that it is my mission to change the lives of China’s 30 million truck drivers," Geng said.
Geng became involved in road logistics in 2006. She noticed the low levels of efficiency for both truck drivers and logistic companies. She got her chance to improve this in 2008, amid the with rise of internet businesses. Geng's team started using on-line tool QQ and GPS to help truck drivers to find goods, Meanwhile, the company also helped logistic companies looking for truck drivers quickly.
Both of their on-line products and cell phone App have helped more than 1.7 million drivers in China to date.
Geng Xiao said in cooperation with Ali-Cloud, a cloud-computing system, reflects freight flows, goods distribution, and vehicle distribution within China. Looking at the bigger picture, Geng said she still sees more opportunities waiting to be discovered.
In the era of an internet economy, experts say women entrepreneurs have an advantage in user experience, emotional thinking and interactions. But they also encounter many constrains in terms of knowledge and funding, and are unable to break away from the dominance of male entrepreneurs.
Participates from the W20-Meeting said more measures should be taken to support women in fully exploreing internet-based innovative thinking, and become active participants of the new technological revolution.
"I think it is important to understand what the possibilities are, it is important to have the government, the private sector, the social profit sectors all work together. Because when you have them all working together, more possibilities for women arise," said Farah Mohamed, founder & CEO of Girls 20.
Participates have agreed that women should be more self-motivated and seek more possibilities in their lives.
And for Geng Xiao, her chances of achieving her goal of success are getting closer.