Sweef Capital: Building a Future Where Women Lead

At its core, Sweef Capital is redefining what it means to invest with purpose. Based in Singapore and led by women, the firm channels capital into high-impact enterprises across Southeast Asia that champion gender equality, sustainability, and community empowerment. By applying its proprietary Gender ROI™ framework and focusing on women-led and women-supportive businesses, Sweef Capital bridges profit with progress, demonstrating that financial success and social transformation can move hand in hand. With that, let’s dive deeper into its mission and innovation with its Director, Rowena Reyes. 

The Journey to Sweef Capital

Every career has its turning points. For one woman, it began in the fast-paced world of investment banking in the Philippines and unfolded across 25 years in Singapore’s finance landscape. From leading mergers and acquisitions across Southeast Asia to founding her own distribution company, her path wove together the analytical precision of finance with the entrepreneurial grit of building something from scratch.

Those years were more than milestones. They were lessons in resilience, collaboration, and vision. Working with women-led SMEs and artisans revealed both the barriers and the brilliance within underserved communities. That experience became the spark behind her work at Sweef Capital, where investment meets purpose. Today, she leads with both head and heart, supporting entrepreneurs, especially women, through capital, mentorship, and opportunity.

At Sweef Capital, it’s not just about funding businesses. It’s about building ecosystems of growth where inclusion and impact go hand in hand.

Why Sweef Capital Was Born

Sweef Capital didn’t emerge from a boardroom strategy. It grew from lived experience. In many professional spaces, gender bias wasn’t just subtle; it was systemic. Tasks were assigned based on assumptions, not ability. Ambition was sometimes mistaken for audacity. Yet, instead of discouragement, these moments became motivation: to create a world where women lead, decide, and thrive.

The founders of Sweef Capital saw an unmistakable gap: despite Southeast Asia’s rapid economic expansion, women-led enterprises remained underfunded and underestimated. They decided to change that narrative. By building a women-led investment firm guided by a gender lens, they set out to prove that investing in women is not charity, it’s smart business.

When women gain economic power, the ripple effects are profound. Communities prosper, industries evolve, and growth becomes more sustainable. Sweef Capital was founded to be a catalyst for that transformation, empowering entrepreneurs, influencing markets, and showing that gender equality and profitability can, and should, coexist.

A Scoop of Impact: The Story of Vilo

Sometimes, change comes in unexpected forms, like ice cream.

In 2017, Indonesian entrepreneurs Jennike Veronika and Vincent Kusuma noticed a gap in their local market: imported ice creams were too sweet, too pricey, and out of touch with local tastes. They founded Vilo to offer something better: delicious, affordable, and homegrown.

But what caught Sweef Capital’s attention wasn’t just Vilo’s flavor. It was its purpose. The company integrated women deeply into its supply chain, providing meaningful livelihoods and empowering women-owned SMEs. Within a year of Sweef Capital’s investment through its Southeast Asia Women’s Economic Empowerment Fund (SWEEF), payments to women suppliers had reached nearly seven times the original target, accounting for almost half of company revenue.

Vilo’s social mission came with measurable impact. Since the investment, the company has expanded to 38 outlets nationwide, selling over 83,000 jars a month while significantly reducing production waste and energy use. Beyond growth, these improvements have translated into stronger environmental performance and greater operational efficiency.

To Sweef Capital, Vilo represents what happens when impact and performance move in sync. Using their proprietary Gender ROI™ tool, the firm measured tangible improvements in gender equality, sustainability, and profitability, all while helping a beloved local brand become a national success story.

Women at the Center of Impact

While many firms talk about ESG and impact, Sweef Capital takes a different approach: women aren’t a subset of their strategy, they’re the starting point.

Through frameworks like Gender ROI™, Sweef Capital assesses every company across the four enterprise dimensions of leadership, workforce, value chain, and society. The goal is simple yet transformative: to identify gaps, track progress, and embed equality into the DNA of every business they support.

Each investment is built around three pillars:

1. Resilience through inclusive leadership means empowering women, which in turn strengthens the resilience of individuals, enterprises, and entire communities.

2. Women’s economic empowerment will not be complete unless women are given equal access to opportunities that enable them to become economically active, have choice and mobility in the workforce, and advance into leadership and decision-making positions. Inclusion through fair representation is essential to driving systemic change. 

3. Ingrained in social and cultural systems are barriers that constrain women in reaching their full potential. Women’s economic participation is hugely influenced by factors such as healthcare needs, unpaid care responsibilities, gender-based violence and low-wage or temporary employment. Violence and harassment in the world of work affects women regardless of age, location, income or social status. It is not enough for women to be gainfully employed; to fully realise women’s economic empowerment, social protection schemes that factor existing barriers need to be in place to ensure their continued employment and advancement.

These aren’t just social wins, they’re commercial advantages. Data shows that diverse teams innovate more, adapt faster, and perform better. For Sweef Capital, gender inclusion is not an add-on to ESG, it’s the engine behind it.

Investing in Care, Health, and the Future

Looking forward, Sweef Capital is deepening its commitment to sectors that create lasting social and economic value: healthcare, education, sustainable food systems, and climate resilience. Across Southeast Asia, millions still face critical gaps in access to reliable healthcare, especially in rural areas. Sweef Capital is addressing this by investing in healthcare infrastructure beyond urban centers, funding clinics and hospitals that bring specialized care to underserved communities.

Women’s health remains a cornerstone of this mission. From preventive screenings to wellness programs, Sweef Capital backs initiatives that empower women to take charge of their well-being. The firm also champions the care economy, where women form the backbone of caregiving worldwide. By investing in childcare, eldercare, and workforce upskilling, it helps transform unpaid labor into pathways for economic participation.

Through these interconnected efforts across key sectors, Sweef Capital is demonstrating that purposeful finance can build more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable societies—proving that impact and profitability can thrive together.

A Vision That Multiplies

Sweef Capital’s story is not just about investment, it’s about redefining success through inclusion. By placing women at the center of its strategy, the firm demonstrates that true, lasting success comes from ensuring everyone has the opportunity to lead, build, and thrive. In doing so, Sweef Capital proves that inclusivity isn’t just good ethics: it’s the driving force of unstoppable growth.

In every entrepreneur they fund, in every company they empower, and in every community they reach, Sweef Capital is creating something far greater than profit. They are building momentum for a new kind of growth: one powered by equality, driven by purpose, and sustained by impact.

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Rowena Reyes is the Investment Director at Sweef Capital, bringing over two decades of experience in corporate finance, private equity, and entrepreneurship across Southeast Asia. Her mission at Sweef Capital is to empower women entrepreneurs, drive inclusive growth, and champion investments that deliver both social impact and sustainable financial returns. 

Visit www.techshake.asia if you would like to know and connect more with Sweef Capital.