According to the 2023 annual report of WinPe, a not-for-profit organization by private equity investors for gender diversity, venture capital (VC) funding for women fell to 9.3 per cent in 2023 from 14.7 per cent in 2021. This was first reported by the Economic Times. Female founders in India received less than 10 per cent of funding in the year, trailing Europe and the US and widening the gender disparity gap even further.
A poll conducted in 2022 by the charity Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), a program that mentors entrepreneurs from underserved communities, showed that over 85 per cent of women entrepreneurs had difficulties while attempting to obtain credit services from public sector banks, as reported by the World Economic Forum.
Additionally, data from the International Finance Corporation has also shown that in emerging markets, women-led start-ups get only 11 per cent of seed funding, as per the ET report. For late-stage funding, the figures become lower.
Ankita Pegu from the Women StartUp Programme (WSP) told the World Economic Forum, “We are still finding it difficult to project (women) as investment-ready.”
Speaking to Outlook Business in an earlier interaction, Jaya Vaidhyanathan, CEO of fintech company BCT Digital and independent director on the board of accounting giant PwC, said that she was not surprised with the figures. She mentioned that the numbers are a reflection of the deep-rooted patriarchy that exists in Indian society. She highlighted how unconscious biases are still prevalent in India, which automatically favors male-led start-ups.
Despite India being the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the country, women-led start-ups often face challenges while getting funding. While some VCs do claim that it's not gender but the pitch idea that dominates the funding, reports say otherwise. 70 per cent of VCs preferred pitches from male entrepreneurs over female entrepreneurs, as per a 2014 Harvard University study.
