Who Is Samantha Dorcas Soh

At 22, when most of her peers are just starting out in their careers, Samantha Dorcas Soh is already one of Singapore's youngest female technopreneurs.

As one of six co-founders of online shopping rewards site ShopBack, Miss Soh and her team have won two Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SITF) awards - a gold for Best Start-up (Growth Stage) and a silver for Best Innovative Info Comm Products (Consumers) - at the SITF Awards 2015 ceremony last Thursday.The feat is remarkable as ShopBack is only a year old, but has already expanded into Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The company, which has generated $25 million in sales from January to August this year, offers shoppers cashback on their online store purchases, rewarding customers with commissions it receives from merchant partners like UK fashion and beauty giant Asos and holiday booking site Agoda.It has given users $1.2 million in cashback since its launch last September.But there was a time when Miss Soh and her family struggled to make ends meet.


When she was about five, her father was declared a bankrupt after his business failed. He worked as a chauffeur, while her mother worked as a kindergarten teacher to support their four children.Miss Soh recalled that when she was in Primary 2, her family of six rented a three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio.


"We all had to share a single bedroom. My parents slept on a double mattress, and my three brothers and I shared roll-out single mattresses on the floor."It was very cramped, and there was no room for a desk for studying. We stayed outside as often as we could, because it was so crowded at home."-