Female founders in India face funding biases, receive $300 million in nine-month: Report

India's women founders have encountered glaring discrimination in funding their businesses as compared to their male counterparts. According to a report by Encubay, a global-diversity-focused network, as many as 799 funding deals happened between June 2023 and February 2024 of which ventures having at least one female founder could crack only 163 deals. During the period, startups raised $6,646 million of funding but ventures with female founders raised $300 million of funding--4.5% of the total funding.

Online fashion jewellery startup GIVA raised $33 million in July 2023 as per Encubay report. The other business ventures with female founders that raised funding in the past nine months are- Delhi-based Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters ($30 million), The Sleep Company ($23 million), MakeO ($16 million), Namdev Finvest ($15 million), INC% ($10.4 million), Nat Habit ($10.2 million), Wingreens Farms ($10 million), Freyr Energy ($7.3 million), and Slurrp Farm ($7.2 million), respectively.

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In January this year, ventures with at least one female founder raised $74 million- 16% of the $461.7 million.

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Fireside Ventures, Titan Capital, Rainmatter Capital, She Capital, Better Capital, Stride Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, Google for startups, Mumbai Angels, Lightbox, and All In Capital are among the leading investors that have funded women-founded ventures.

Besides VC funds such as Seema Chaturvedi's AWE Funds, Anisha Singh's She Capital, Vani Kola-led Kalaari Capital, Deeksha Ahuja's Encubay Angel Network, and Ankita Vashistha's Arise StrongHer Ventures have supported women entrepreneurs in the country.

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"There is a significant increase in the number of female-led and co-led companies looking to raise capital and are building disruptive, investment-able, and impact-focused businesses. Hence it’s now important to ensure that an equitable amount of funding goes to these startups; money is mandatory for ventures to grow," Deeksha Ahuja, Founder of Encubay told Mint.

According to the Encubay report, India ranks 135 in gender parity out of the 146 countries. Less than 3% of the VC funding goes to women in the country.