Earlier this week, angel investing platform LetsVenture launched a women angel network to enable women investors’ access early and growth-stage startups. This move to improve the diversity and gender parity among India’s investor community comes on the back a study by the platform that found that women formed a mere 1 percent of India’s 10,000-strong angel investor community.

The picture is not very different across the globe especially in emerging markets. A 2019 report by IFC- Oliver Wyman and Rock-Creek found that women held only 10 percent of all senior positions in private equity and venture capital firms globally. The India numbers were at an abysmal 7 percent.

Gender gaps in the representation of women as allocators and recipients of capital also puts access to financing at risk for female entrepreneurs and is likely to reduce investment returns for funds as per the report. The fact that only 7 percent of entrepreneurs in India are women and only 5 percent make it to the executive chairs and this is just one part of the story.

Data mined by Venture Intelligence shows that amongst the top 150 funded startups in India, only 16.7 percent were led by women founders in 2020 from 11.8 percent in 2015.

To understand what is keeping women from turning active investors and what kind of biases do they face -unconscious or otherwise as they start investing, CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan spoke to Shanti Mohan, CEO and co-founder at LetsVenture; Maya Chandrasekaran, co-founder at Green Artha Innovations; and one of India’s most active women angels, Archana Priyadarshini.

They also discussed why education and mentorship opportunities available to women continue to be low when compared to their male counterparts in the investor and startup community even in 2021 and what needs to be done to bridge this gap.

Watch video for more.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published:Mar 10, 2021 7:04 PM IST