Women entrepreneurs in India have a reason to rejoice. With an increasing number of women entering the startup space in India a few veterans have come together to launch a SEBI approved venture capital fund, exclusively for women.
Christened Saha Fund, it has a corpus of Rs 1 billion. The fund would invest in companies run by women entrepreneurs. It will also invest in companies which employ a majority of workforce as women or those creating a service or product for women. It would invest in companies across e-commerce, social media, mobile, cloud, education, analytics, healthcare, food tech and tech platforms.
The fund believes in discovering and leveraging the untapped women talent available in the market and bringing it to the forefront and aims to be a part of building tomorrow’s women senior managers, top leadership and board members.
Ankita Vashistha is the founder and chief executive officer of Saha Fund. She has a decade of experience in the private equity and venture capital space at leading companies. Among those who have invested in the fund as limited partners are former Infosys veteran T V Mohandas Pai, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon and Avinash Vashistha, past Chairman and Managing Director of Accenture in India.
Saha Fund has already announced an investment in Kaaryah, a fashion portal offering western and non-casual wear for Indian women.
Even though the number of start-ups founded by women entrepreneurs is unevenly lower at this point, the early success of some of the women-run (or co-founded) companies such as Zivame, Nykaa, Sheroes and CashKaro has ignited participation of more women in the new-age technology ventures.