Image Credit: Andrew Neel on Unsplash
Aiming to close up to US$1 billion, The Billion Dollar Fund for Women aims to minimise the funding gap experienced by women entrepreneurs
The Billion Dollar Fund for Women was launched today at the Tri Hita Karana (THK) Forum on Sustainable Development 2018 in Bali, Indonesia, as a global consortium for venture funds to pledge increased investments in women-founded companies.
Aiming for a US$1 billion goal by 2020, the campaign has gathered over US$460 million in pledges from venture capital (VC) firms such as Backstage Capital, Different Funds, Gobi Partners, Rethink Impact, Golden Gate Ventures, and Springboard Growth Capital.
“As a female technopreneur, I know how the funding challenge curbs the growth of female founded enterprises. The current institutions have failed to properly recognise the success rate of female-led companies and to understand their needs,” said The Billion Dollar Fund for Women co-founder Anousheh Ansari in a press statement.
“The … campaign is the first phase of our ambitious plans to disrupt the current models,” she stressed.
The consortium was co-founded by Ansari, Nadereh Chamlou, Anu Jain, Shelly Porges, and Sarah Chen.
It plans to launch campaigns to draw attention to opportunities to invest in women-founded companies, bridging the gap between private, public, and institutional investors globally.
The Billion Dollar Fund for Women also plans to re-invest some of the proceeds from the funds from 2020-2028, in order to secure another US$1 billion in funding to invest in women-founded companies over the next decade.
Its ultimate goal is to minimise the funding gap experienced by women entrepreneurs.
Despite being able to bring in 20 per cent more revenue, women-founded companies raise 50 per cent fewer investments than their men-founded counterparts.
In the US alone, all-women teams have received just US$1.9 billion or two per cent of the total of US$85 billion invested by venture capitalists in 2017, according to data by Fortune.
A recent report by ANGIN also revealed that women-led ventures make up only 22 per cent of accelerator participants in Indonesia.
Source : www.e27.co
Written by Anisa Menur A. Maulani
