A full-time job assumes you can leave the house from nine to seven. For many lower-income women in Singapore, that is exactly what they cannot do, whether because of caregiving, health or an unstable home. A charity called Rise and Thrive was built for that gap, helping such women earn through small businesses run from where they already are: home.
It grew out of one volunteering stint. In 2019, Sapna Kewalramani Malhotra signed up to tutor a secondary school student in mathematics, then stepped back, unsure she was the right teacher. The volunteer manager redirected her to the student's mother instead, Nooril Azurah Suntek Noor, who was raising five children, one with special needs, and baking Nutella tarts from a rental flat for a few hundred dollars a month.
Drawing on a branding and illustration business she had once run from home, Kewalramani began meeting Azurah weekly to work through pricing, packaging and branding. The business, Qwalaaa, grew; it now handles corporate and repeat catering orders, and Azurah has since moved into a Housing and Development Board flat of her own. More women followed, and volunteers with marketing, finance and photography skills joined in. The informal effort became a registered charity in 2025.
Rise and Thrive now says it has helped 91 women build home-based businesses spanning food, beauty services and crafts such as sewing and crocheting. The women, whom it calls "Risers," go through a roughly three-year programme: six months of business basics with a mentor, then introductions to corporate and consumer buyers through the charity's network, with later support such as book-keeping and an alumni track where some return as mentors.
The model is deliberately selective. Referred through social service agencies, applicants need a household per-capita income below S$1,600, a phone and a tablet or laptop, basic business English, a marketable product and commitment. Demand exceeds capacity: 20 of 47 referrals were accepted last year, with 30 places this year. The charity says it invests about S$6,000 in each woman over three years, funded by grants, donations, corporate partnerships and its own programme income, and that Risers typically earn around S$1,300 a month after a year or so, enough to bridge a period when full-time work is impossible.
Kewalramani, 40, a British national and Singapore permanent resident, came to the work through her family's Kewal Ramani Foundation, where she is director of grants. Funding alone, she found, often was not enough: women placed in stable jobs sometimes dropped out because they needed to be home. "A stable home is the foundation on which financial stability is built," she told CNA Women.
The Risers include teenage mothers, grandmothers, former offenders and women whose husbands are incarcerated. One is Chitra Munusamy, 47, who built the home bakery Chitz Bakez to support her three daughters. "I bake with a lot of love and extra care," she told CNA Women. "I don't want people to buy from me out of pity. I want to make the best products so that people who eat them feel good."
For Kewalramani, the ask of the public is small but deliberate. Ordering from a home business takes a message, a wait and a pickup, more effort than a shop. But, she argues, the return runs deeper than the purchase: "When you purchase consciously, host consciously, gift consciously, you are investing in women who invest in themselves."