VC Funding Still A Tall Order For Women Founders

Lack of support through VC funding is a major impediment to progress of women entrepreneurs compared to their male counterparts

- Shipra Singh

Whitney Wolfe Herd last month made history on several fronts. The 31-year-old became the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire after taking Bumble for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and also the youngest woman founder to take a company public. Look further and the picture fades a little. Wolfe is only the 22nd woman ever to have scaled a company to a successful IPO. While a well-deserved feat and a definite win for female entrepreneurs, in comparison, this accomplishment arrives after several thousand male founders globally have already scaled their companies to successfully go public. A rude reminder of the numerous impediments that continue to pull back women entrepreneurs from growing as fast as their male counterparts.

DISPARITY IN FUNDING

A most common challenge is the lack of support in the form of external funding. Data from Venture Intelligence, a private company data tracker, shows that in 2019 only 6.5 per cent of the total funding raised among the top 150 funded start-ups in India went to women-founded and cofounded start-ups.

Covid-19 led disruption made it worse for women founders as funding for women-founded and co-founded startups in India fell 24 per cent to USD 280 million in the first half of 2020 from USD 369 million in the same period the year before, as per a report by MAKERS India.