Helene Raudaschl and Trailblazing a Path for Asian Women in Business

If there is one thing we have learned at VWS, it is never to underestimate the power of a mother. Listening to the stories of dozens of women founders, time and time again, it is the matriarch of the family who they cite as their most significant influence. They are their inspiration — the special ingredient that gave them the confidence, skills, and conviction needed to succeed. Nowhere is this more true than Helene Raudaschl. 

Helene, the founder of Arlene World, a fast growing plant-based food line out of United Arab Emirates, comes from a long line of food industry lifers. In her early childhood, Helene had developed an extensive palette. She knew the taste of raspberries, blueberries, and smoked salmon back when such things were exotic items in Hong Kong. By the time she hit seven, she was listing European cheeses like nobody's business. 

Helene's memories of the summer holidays weren't lazy days lounging on the couch watching cartoons. Instead, Helene was learning the business, while shadowing her mother, a pioneer at the forefront of Hong Kong's food importation. Helene loved every second of it, absorbing every wise word her mother had to offer. 

Recounting her mother's journey in vivid detail, Helene based her success on the blueprint laid out by her mother. The two share similar personalities. Both are strong-headed women with unwavering conviction with a passion for food quality and satisfaction. 

Helene paints her mother as a conquering hero, and rightfully so — trying to succeed in the male-dominated food industry is no easy task. Add being a mother of two and a culture that constantly seeks to pigeon-hole women into the housewife role, it is easy to understand why Helene speaks of her mother with such reverence. 

With her mother the leader of a food empire, Helene knew that she would take over the family business one day… just not right away. She wanted to carve her own path. Deciding to head to Singapore, what was meant to be a two-year stay became 24 years after Helene joined Indoguna Singapore. 

But her mom wasn't left in the lurch for long. Recognizing her expertise, Helene brought her into the fold along with her co-founder, an Indonesian Chinese divorced mother of four, who faced the same adversity as her mother. Together with Helene's sister, the four women formed a supergroup of women founders ready to change the world.

While her mother influenced Helene's early career, her son Max is currently shaping her opinions. Upon returning home on weekends while conscripted to the Singapore army, Helene wanted to provide the best food she could for her son. A keen basketball player, Max had always been health conscious. Inspired by the Netflix documentary The Game Changers, Max wanted to give the plant-based diet a shot to see if what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dotsie Bausch were extolling lived up to the hype. Approaching her son's lifestyle change with an open mind and wanting to provide the food variety she had been gifted as a child, Helene decided to give it a try. The result was a not-so-pleasing experience. Plant-based options were hard to come by in Singapore at the time, and what there was, was horribly bland, giving Helene flashbacks to the Buddhist religious festivals of her adolescence. Knowing that she could do better, Helene began planning what would eventually become Arlene.

COVID accelerated the process. The business was booming before the pandemic. But with production stalling, Helene and her team found themselves with much more free time on their hands. Looking to beat the lockdown blues, they began designing their plant-based range. Helene came to the project with the ethos and ethics instilled by her mother. Quality first, with her own addendum of having as much variety as possible. Now Arlene lives up to Helene's initial vision, delivering a delicious array of plant-based meals from various cuisines.

Arlene World's target is not the hardcore vegan — rather plant-based skeptics. She admits that the prevailing thought in Asia is that plant-based equals bland. “Veggieterrible” is a staple of people's vocabulary. Adopting a level-headed approach to the dismissal and derision of plant-based culture, Helene doesn't want to cram veganism down people's throats. Just take it one meal at a time. As for the hot button topic of whether plant-based products should be emulating their meaty brethren, Helene's philosophy is whatever gets more people eating plant-based. Satisfaction is key. If that means making a veggie patty that looks and tastes like a quarter pounder, so be it. 

Challenging people's perceptions of plant-based appears to be Helene's end-game as she enters the back end of her career. She has inherited the Gen Z approach of environmentalism, where the small changes we make to our dinner plate are the key to saving our planet. But Helene is by no means done. Arlene is set to continue its work at proving plant-based is best, looking to capitalize on Singapore's hawker culture with its own line of quick-serve restaurants, as well as preparing for their expansion into the North American market. While her path may be laid out before her, Helene continues to use the perspectives of generations past and present to excel.