Maria Grace Uy, the 53-year-old co-founder and president of fiber Internet provider Converge ICT Solutions Inc., believes that their company has just started despite achieving over P230 billion in market capitalization just a year after it launched an initial public offering.
“I have always lived with the principle that to be successful, you need to put in everything you’ve got and always work to do it better. And we still believe that we have just started,” says Mary Grace, wife of co-founder and chairman Dennis Anthony, in an interview with Forbes Magazine for the 2021 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list, which recognizes 20 female business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mary Grace is the only Filipino woman in the list which includes the likes of Thailand’s Wallapa Traisorat, president and CEO of real estate company Asset World Corp.; Helen Wong, the first woman to helm the 89-year-old Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., Singapore’s second-largest bank by market value; and South Korea’s Lee In-kyung, the first woman partner at MBK Partners, one of the largest homegrown buyout firms in Asia.
Forbes Magazine describes Mary Grace Uy as a notable listee for helping grow Converge ICT into one of the largest fixed broadband operators in the Philippines. Converge went public in late 2020 in one of the country’s largest-ever IPOs, raising $522 million. Its shares have since risen over 70 percent, pushing the company’s market capitalization to $4.6 billion.
In September 2021, Forbes Magazine estimated the net worth of Dennis Anthony and Maria Grace Uy at $2.8 billion, making them the sixth in the list of the richest billionaires in the Philippines.
Maria Grace, a certified public accountant, graduated from De La Salle University in 1988 and placed 16th in the Certified Public Accountant Licensure Board Examination in 1989. She worked for various companies, including as accounting manager at IBM Philippines from 1990 to 1997 and as vice president for finance in Savers Mall Group of Companies from 1997 to 2000, prior to establishing Converge ICT Solutions in 2007 with her husband.
In 2019, she led the negotiations for a $250-million investment from Warburg Pincus that Converge used to expand its fiber network to cover 25 percent of Filipino households. The couple then took the company public in late 2020 in one of the country’s largest-ever IPOs, raising $522 million, according to Forbes Magazine.
“Its financials are doing well, as pandemic-driven demand led to an 84-percent jump in first-quarter revenue to P5.5 billion from a year earlier, while net income nearly tripled to P1.5 billion. Converge doubled its subscriber base to over 1 million last year and plans to more than double the reach of its fiber network by 2025,” Forbes Magazine says in a press statement shared with the local media.
Aside from being president of Converge ICT, Mary Grace also serves as chief resources officer and executive director of the company.
Forbes Magazine said businesswomen across the Asia Pacific region continue to break barriers and, in many cases, expand their businesses despite the lingering pandemic. Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen list recognizes outstanding leaders who managed to adapt and thrive in industries including technology, healthcare, banking, and manufacturing.
“They are leading the way as the world struggles with the post-COVID-19 reality,” said Rana Wehbe Watson, editor of the 2021 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list.
All the businesswomen highlighted are newcomers to the list, further expanding Forbes Asia’s network of prominent businesswomen in the region. They have been selected for their achievements in managing either a business with sizable revenues or a startup valued at over $100 million.
Also featured on the list is serial entrepreneur Meena Ganesh, who cofounded Portea Medical, India’s largest home healthcare company by revenue. Prior to taking over as chairperson in August, Ganesh had been running the eight-year-old Bangalore-based company as managing director and CEO.
The youngest to make this year’s list is 37-year-old Malaysian Nadiah Wan who holds two CEO titles at her company. She is group CEO and executive director of TMC Life Sciences, a role she took in 2019. She is also CEO of its flagship Thomson Hospital Kota Damansara, a position she has held since 2017.
Wan introduced a COVID-19 task force at the hospital and launched a mobile app, providing remote end-to-end patient care.
Keiko Erikawa, executive chairman of Koei Tecmo, cofounded the company with her husband Yoichi and built it into one of Japan’s largest video-game developers over four decades. The listed company now has a market capitalization of $8.5 billion. In June this year, Erikawa became an outside director–and the only woman on the board–of SoftBank Group.
She also manages Koei Tecmo’s $1.1 billion in assets across Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S.
Marina Budiman is cofounder and president commissioner of DCI Indonesia, the largest data center operator in Indonesia with over 50-percent market share. It is also Southeast Asia’s first Tier IV data center, the industry’s highest rating for reliability and resiliency. At around $7 billion, DCI is now one of Indonesia’s most valuable public companies.
The complete Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen list can be found at www.forbes.com/asiapowerbusinesswomen2021.