Village Cap, StanChart partner to invest in women-led startups

STARTUP VENTURE CAPITALJanuary 31, 2024 at 11:13 PM UTC

TLDR

Village Capital and Standard Chartered Bank collaborate on a financing facility for women-led startups in the Women in Tech program.
The facility aims to address the gender financing gap and provide essential capital for early-stage impact-focused startups.
The goal is to empower women entrepreneurs and provide them with investment and financing opportunities.

Village Capital has joined forces with Standard Chartered Bank to launch a financing facility aimed at investing in alumni from the bank's Women in Tech program.

This collaboration specifically targets early-stage, impact-focused startups led by women founders, aiming to tackle the persistent gender financing gap within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The primary goal of the financing facility is to offer essential catalytic capital, empowering women entrepreneurs to overcome challenges associated with accessing investment and financing opportunities, a hurdle often faced more acutely by women compared to their male counterparts.

Key Takeaways

In Africa, female entrepreneurs are taking their place in the male-dominated tech world. However, gender bias still makes it harder for them to access finance and grow their businesses. Per Briter Bridges, only 3% of the total funding raised by startups in Africa since 2013 has gone to all-women co-founded teams. Efforts and initiatives like this are crucial to increasing female representation in and contribution to the startup space, which remains minute against a faster-growing percentage of ventures run by men.

Village Capital

Standard Chartered

Partnership

Women in Business

Venture Funding