The funding gap between male and female-led ventures worldwide is still far from close to being equal.

The numbers are still nowhere near where they should be, but when looking at the growth that occurred in 2021, it is evident that we are progressing in the right direction, but there is still so much left to do!

Let’s discuss the numbers that rolled in for female entrepreneurs at the end of 2021. We must understand where we are in our push for equality to better tailor our methods as we proceed to break glass ceilings and bridge the gap between men and women both in 2022 and beyond.

The hard-hitting truth in numbers

Some key points to note from the year we’ve just transitioned from:

• On average, women-founded companies grew by 84 per cent compared to male-founded companies, which grew by only 78 per cent in 2021
• VC funding reached all-time highs in 2021, but female-founded companies received just two per cent of funding, which is the smallest share since 2016
• Teams of male and female co-founders obtained 15.6 per cent of the total VC funding in 2021
• Per the Boston Consulting Group, female-owned start-ups generated US$0.78 in revenue for every dollar invested, while male-only start-ups generated US$0.31 in revenue for every dollar invested.

Women-led businesses are not slowing down. In fact, they are growing. Historically, female entrepreneurs have been recognised worldwide for success in sectors such as fashion or cosmetics.

As of late, many female entrepreneurs have been able to scale exponentially in other industries, especially mission-driven and client-focused, such as real estate and biopharma.

While women have proven their ability to become successful in business, they are still forced to face hurdles such as societal expectations and lack of representation, capital, and support, resulting in fewer entry points for women to break through into strong business networking opportunities.

Last year was a big year for VC funding as all-time highs were reached in investment dollars. Unfortunately, with a sharp increase in funds being disbursed, female-founded companies received only two per cent of that funding.

In years past, that percentage has fluctuated, but two per cent truly marks the smallest share for female founders since 2016. At this point, female entrepreneurs are growing regardless of the numbers working against them.

Also Read: Levelling the playing field: How to build a home for women in tech

This is one of the very reasons we’ve founded Angel Alliance, to help empower and fund female entrepreneurs worldwide that deserve the recognition that VCs are failing to provide them today. For female entrepreneurs to acquire more funding, we will need to see an upward shift in representation.

By making entrepreneurship accessible to more women around the world through networking opportunities, supporting female growth in STEM, and providing reasonable means of education, we will begin to see an increase in confident women who believe in their skill sets enough to break through the glass ceilings that’s been placed on them.

It is evident that VCs are making an effort to empower women more, but it is also clear that they feel far more confident in doing so when men are also involved in a project.

Quite an interesting topic, though, when you think about female-founded businesses’ abilities to generate more than twice as much revenue per dollar invested than male founded businesses.

One can’t help but wonder when we’ll cross the threshold of needing a male founder to entice VCs and over into a world where female founders are viewed equally as capable as any male entrepreneur. 

Women have potential

Total global income for women is expected to grow from US$13 trillion to US$18 trillion within the next five years! While there’s no clear prediction regarding female funding, there’s one thing we know for sure; it can only go up from here.

If this projection is accurate, then the growth we saw last year for female entrepreneurs is a mere glimpse into what is just around the corner. Countless barriers need to be broken on the path to equality in the entrepreneurial and professional worlds.

Suppose women can truly continue to inch closer towards the overall income men achieve. In that case, the rest of the world will finally begin to realise that business capabilities are not distinguished by gender.

Angel Alliance: The gamechanger in the market

Angel Alliance is a collection of 6,666 unique NFTs launching on Ethereum on the 26th of March. The NFT project is poised to function as a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation, aka the AngelDAO.

Being a community-driven NFT project, our DAO structure will allow our NFT holders to maintain voting right in each decision made to extend our resources out to people worldwide that need them most.

One of the biggest issues facing female entrepreneurs is finding opportunities to thrive and grow. In 2020, only 2.3 per cent of VC funding went to female founders, and although that number has increased slightly over time, it still has yet to surpass 3 per cent.

Angel Alliance has been coined the “Shark Tank” of Web3 and is quickly gaining popularity as we continue to push forward on our mission to remedy this statistic.

We’re working daily to build a collection capable of empowering and uplifting entrepreneurs worldwide by providing them with grants, education, and exclusive access to resources and networking opportunities to help them scale their businesses. 

How is this DAO leading the change?

Angel Alliance is more than an NFT collection, we’ll be providing solutions to entrepreneurs’ greatest struggles, and we are the first NFT collection specifically dedicated to this cause.

Our goal is to build an uplifting community that allows women to share their business successes and struggles. Social media often creates a distorted image of reality that only shows the growth of someone’s business, not the hardships or low points.

Also Read: From women, to women: Celebrating empowerment in tech

We understand building a business is not easy, and we want women to come to our community to get advice, network with like-minded women, and build up their confidence.

Female founders worldwide will have the opportunity to pitch their businesses to our community, who will then vote on which projects they’d like to see receive grants directly from the DAO.

All grants provided will be a minimum of US$5,000, and any sector qualifies for application. As well as providing funding to founders, Angel Alliance will be offering weekly events hosted by experienced investors to help teach the community how to both apply and succeed in securing funding.

Angel Alliance will offer a bespoke mentorship and support programme to our community, which will match them with experienced professionals that can guide them through their entrepreneurial journeys.

Here are some of our minting rewards:

• US$5,000 giveaway to whoever mints one of our special 1/1’s
• World of Women NFT to one random minter from our pre-sale

 Here are some of our holder perks:

• Exclusive networking
• Educational workshops
• Like-minded + supportive community
• Business grant opportunities (up to US$15k)
• Regular business advice + guidance
• IRL + virtual events

Here are some of our partners and advisors:

• BooHoo: Leading online fashion
• Holly Shore: Fitness enthusiast and mentor
• Kat Dunn: Humanitarian Capitalist, TEDxSpeaker, and Peace Prize winner
• Arjita Sethi: Angel Investor, Entrepreneur, and NASDAQ Advisory Board Member

If you are a female entrepreneur reading this article, I implore you to dive into the world surrounding Angel Alliance.

We are working diligently to provide empowering education and resources, funding through business grants and investor relations, training workshops and guidance regularly, and virtual and IRL events around the world!

If you haven’t hopped into our Discord yet, please head over and take a peek at some of the resources, education, and community. We host giveaways and live podcasts regularly, too. All are welcome! 

Note: This article is not a piece of financial advice. We recommend that you do your research.

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Malaysia-based iPrice Group, which provides a price comparison platform in Southeast Asia, has raised US$5 million from Japan’s Itochu Corporation and the KDDI Open Innovation Fund III (operated by Global Brain Corporation).

With the new funding, iPrice stated it will expand its services to the lending market by helping users find the best e-commerce offering and the best consumer loans to fund their purchases.

iPrice Group operates under its own brand iPrice and through various partnerships with apps, such as SmartPay (Vietnam), GoRewards (Philippines), Home Credit (Indonesia) Visense (Singapore), Robinsons rewards (Philippines) & Boost (Malaysia). It also runs a site in Hong Kong.

The Kuala Lumpur-headquartered firm recently launched a Price Watch service allowing users in Indonesia to receive alerts of their desired products’ price drops directly at iPrice App. The service will continue to roll out in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand throughout 2022.

Also Read: Southeast Asian e-commerce group iPrice raises funding from LINE’s corporate VC arm

iPrice claims it compares and catalogues over 7 billion e-commerce offers from more than 8 million sellers, attracting more than 130 million unique users in 2021 across the region.

The company’s new investor Itochu has vast experience in lending, and its subsidiary PT ITC Auto Multi Finance operates a lending business in Indonesia under the brand Payku. Aside from Payku, iPrice’s other lending partners include Home Credit (Indonesia), Julo (Indonesia), Cashalo (Philippines), Smartpay (Vietnam), and ZIP (Singapore, launching in H1 2022).

In May 2018, iPrice Group had raised an undisclosed sum in fresh funding led by LINE Ventures, the corporate venture arm of LINE Corporation. A year later, it announced a partnership to launch LINE SHOPPING in Indonesia.

A Facebook and Bain & Company report indicates that in 2021, the number of platforms used by SEA digital consumers has steadily risen to 7.9 websites per user on average, nearly 52 per cent more than 2020. A Google report predicts that digital lending will hit $92 billion in transactions by 2025 due to its current acceleration in Southeast Asia.

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Transforming practice in medicine will always be a challenge. We doctors study for a long time to specialise in a certain area of medicine, and this makes us both extremely passionate about our field but also sometimes blinkered to a certain way of doing things.

But there’s also the important matter of the safety of our patients to consider. Historically tried and tested methods will always feel the safest and least risky option.

However, we must remain open to the possibility that new technologies, such as AI, can help diagnose issues earlier and faster, with greater accuracy and less variability, thus freeing up the time used doing manual tasks to help put more focus on the patient.

A smarter machine for a healthier heart

Running a tech company was never part of the plan; I’m more of an accidental entrepreneur.

My husband and co-founder received a worrying diagnosis about his heart during a routine check one day. He was immediately referred for an echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart), only to be told “abnormal” by one doctor and “normal. You have nothing to worry about” by a second doctor; both are reading the same images of his heart.

The discrepancy between the two diagnoses and the highly manual process, and the high margin for error of reading the images struck James. He immediately saw the potential of automating the process and removing any guesswork from reading echocardiograms and giving accurate diagnoses.

Also Read: What telemedicine and Health Tech holds across SEA amidst COVID-19

Admittedly, I was sceptical at first. I’ve spent decades in this field studying to become a professor of cardiology, and there are so many different technical aspects to consider. Still, I came to realise that AI can be so advanced that it can automatically trace the heart’s borders, recognise widths, and all the other crucial measurements necessary to read an echocardiogram.

Similar platforms are partially automated, which means humans still need to manually select the correct image or pinpoint a specific landmark of the heart before the system can read the image.

We were determined to create an end-to-end, fully automated tool, thereby freeing doctors from manual, repetitive, error-prone tasks yet leaving them in full control and with time to focus on matters that require their specialised eye.

The platform improves clinical decision making and cardiovascular research. It recognises 23 echo parameters of the heart and produces a report of a full suite of the basic variables needed for a standard adult transthoracic echocardiogram evaluation that is accessible to non-specialists and affordable.

Advocating an inclusive approach

In order to produce the best possible product, we put a big emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Suppose there are any sex-specific cutoffs, for instance. In that case, we include both men’s and women’s information in the AI, rather than defaulting to the male model as representative of both genders, which has traditionally been the approach.

So by introducing new technology and ensuring all approaches to research and development are inclusive, we can ensure the technology works for all and is a positive advancement for medicine.

Reaching goals, one echo at a time

It’s safe to say that machines will only become smarter and more powerful in our fight against diseases. But the world of medicine should lean in to harness the power of new technology to increase doctors’ efficiency, cut down on human error, and ultimately save even more lives.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

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FishLog raises seed funding round led by Insignia Ventures Partners

Funding: Indonesian B2B fisheries marketplace FishLog announced an undisclosed seed funding round.

Investors: Led by Insignia Ventures Partners. Arise Ventures, KK Fund, impact investor Ango Ventures, and Indian growth stage startup Captain
Fresh also participated in the round. It also included prominent angels such as Kopi Kenangan Co-founder and CEO Edward Tirtanata, AwanTunai Co-founder Windy Natriavi, Shipper CMO Jessica Hendrawidjaja, and other strategic angel investors from Indonesia.

The plan: The company will use this round of funding to expand its ecosystem of digital-first products and services for fisheries in Indonesia, scale its regional network across the country, enable new partners to join the ecosystem, and build out its team and capabilities.

The company: FishLog was established in 2020 by Bayu Anggara, Reza Fahlepi and Abdul Halim. The company launched a digital platform to improve distribution for fisheries stakeholders including fishermen, processing partners and cold chain logistics, focusing specifically on strengthening distribution to increase volume. Since implementing this model, FishLog said that it has grown almost 20 times revenue year-on-year.

Also Read: The 27 Indonesian startups that have taken the ecosystem to next level this year

DELOS secures US$8M seed funding extension round co-led by MDI-KB’s Centauri Fund, Alpha JWC Ventures

Funding: Indonesian aquaculture startup DELOS announced a US$8 million extension to its seed funding round.

Investors: Co-led by Centauri (a collaborative fund between MDI Ventures and KB Investment) and Alpha JWC Ventures (a leading Southeast Asian VC fund), existing investors Number Capital, Arise, iSeed SEA, Irvan Kolonas, as well as Alto Partners Multi-Family Office, Mahanusa Capital, Kopi Kenangan founder James Prananto, and a number of strategic follow-on investors.

The company: Founded in 2021 by Guntur Mallarangeng, Bobby Indra Gunawan, Alexander Farthing, and Aristya Noerhadi, DELOS aims to drive the growth and modernisation of the Indonesian aquaculture industry. DELOS buiilds data-driven solutions to day-to-day problems faced by shrimp farmers, and the company said that its early traction has proven its effectiveness in optimising farm operations and significantly growing output.

The plan: DELOS to use the funds to accelerate the onboarding of its “vast” backlog of client farms, and continue to build and scale its main products AquaHero, AquaLink, and AquaBank to accelerate the growth of Indonesian aquaculture.

Also Read: A horse of another: Here’s the complete list of Southeast Asia’s 28 unicorns

Animoca Brands co-leads a US$88M funding round of Hex Trust

The funding: Hong Kong-based provider of digital asset custody services Hex Trust has secured US$88 million in a Series B investment round, Asia Tech Daily reported.

The investors: Led by Liberty City Ventures and Animoca Brands, the funding round also included the participation of Ripple, Morgan Creek, Terra, Primavera Venture Partners, and entrepreneur Adrian Cheng. According to Bloomberg, the investment puts the company’s capitalisation to US$300 million.

The company: Hext Trust was founded in 2018 by Alessio Quaglini, Marc Amez-Droz, and Rafal Czerniawski. It is best known for its proprietary bank-grade platform Hex Safe which enables financial companies, digital asset firms, and organisations to access decentralised financing and prime trading solutions.

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Image Credit: FishLog

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When it comes to promoting a more eco-friendly lifestyle, particularly in the matter of plastic waste management, there is one angle that is often not discussed due to its taboo nature. Yet, as with any problem that we do not talk about, silence does not stop it from impacting our lives.

In their special report, National Geographic estimates that in the US alone, over the course of a lifetime, a single menstruator will use somewhere between five and 15 thousand pads and tampons. A vast majority of these products end up producing waste that includes wrappings and packaging.

This is a problem that is prevalent on a global level as the use of disposable period products have become synonymous with the modern lifestyle. It is the reason why Indonesia-based Perfect Fit aims to tackle the waste issue by providing reusable period products for menstruators in the country.

“Single-use pads are made of 90 per cent plastic and is unable to degrade in Indonesia’s insufficient waste management infrastructure. All the pads that have been used many years ago are not properly degraded and ended up causing microplastic pollution,” explains co-founder Tungga Dewi in an interview with e27. She estimated that there are eight billion disposable pads polluting landfills, rivers, and beaches in Indonesia.

The startup’s products range from reusable period underwear (that can be worn on its own without other supporting products such as tampons or menstrual cups) and cloth pads. Despite the gravity of the problem itself, environmental risk is just one of the challenges that the startup aims to tackle: they also aim to address health concerns from using single-use period products and offer a wider variety of options for customers.

In the global market, reusable period products such as menstrual cups have been gaining popularity in recent years. But for this product to gain popularity in Indonesia, there is one particular hurdle.

Also Read: COVID-19, the environment, and the tech ecosystem: what opportunity is available out there for us?

“Using cups remains culturally inappropriate for many Indonesians because we are not accustomed to tampons. This is why we decide to go with period underwear; this might be something that is more acceptable for Indonesian women as it is not internally worn,” says co-founder Riesa Putri.

Statistically speaking, she elaborated, only five per cent of period products users in Indonesia are using reusable period products –out of this number, less than one per cent is using menstrual cups. Perfect Fit believes that they will have a greater chance of succeeding if they are going with the reusable version of products that are already popular in the market.

“We see this as an underserved market with a high potential,” she stresses.

Women helping women

Perfect Fit is an example of a startup that started off as a non-profit project. The co-founders met when they were both working at Kopernik, a non-profit organisation in Indonesia that aims to reduce poverty in rural areas.

By the time, they were involved in a project that aims to educate underprivileged young women in Ruteng, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) –the southernmost province in Indonesia and one of the least developed in the archipelago–  about reproductive health. As part of this project, the co-founders worked together with underprivileged women in the area to produce cloth pads to be introduced to the young women who are taking part in the educational programme.

“At first, we did not intend to sell the pads, but then we began to see demands from local communities for this product. It reminded them of what their mother’s generation used to wear,” Dewi explains. “… especially since [single use] period products are not as accessible in the area.”

Also Read: How consumers are prioritising sustainability beyond the single lens of eco-friendly products

Fast forward to 2020, the co-founders began to see an opportunity to turn this into something that is both impactful and profitable. According to statistics, the feminine hygiene products market in Indonesia is currently US$1.5 billion –and this number is expected to continue to grow in the next five years.

So they discussed with the executives at Kopernik about turning the project into an enterprise; the co-founders immediately received the green light as the organisation is always open for their solutions to be used by the wider society –in order to create a greater impact.

To achieve this, Perfect Fit developed a buy-one-give-one model where every purchase of period underwear –which is marketed towards urban consumers in Indonesia– will support the distribution of cloth pads for underprivileged communities in NTT.

“We’re currently focusing in this region but we already have partners in Celebes and Papua,” says Dewi.

Finding that perfect fit

Perfect Fit is definitely not the first company to introduce reusable period underwear. North American brands such as Thinx and Australian brands such as Modibodi has gained international popularity with their line of reusable period underwear in recent years. What are the lessons that Perfect Fit can learn from these companies and their success?

“Interestingly, if we look at the case studies of these companies, because the Western market is more accustomed to tampons, their transition process to period underwear is relatively harder. Yet Modibodi was able to grow by 300 per cent in the first years of their establishment. The same also happened to Thinx … they eventually ended up having the majority of their shares being acquired by Kimberly-Clark,” explains Putri.

“This gives us hope as, in Indonesia, 95 per cent of customers are already accustomed to using pads … so the transition process shouldn’t be too hard,” she stresses.

As the popularity of reusable menstrual products continues to rise, we also begin to see mainstream fashion brands such as Cotton On and Uniqlo launching their own line of period underwear. But Perfect Fit remains confident in the fact that their products are locally made in Indonesia and the social impact angle of their brand.

“It actually gives us a validation that brands as big as Uniqlo and Cotton On would even be willing to enter this range. We have to claim our portion in the market,” Putri stresses.

“Even before this became a trend, we were already deeply invested in the movement to eliminate period poverty. We do not do this just because it is trendy,” Dewi adds.

From their headquarter in Bali, Perfect Fit is being run by a team of six people. With Kopernik co-founders Toshi Nakamura and Ewa Wojkowska as their advisors, the startup is working together with a group of underprivileged women in NTT to produce their reusable menstrual products.

The startup has been supported by EUR150,000 (US$164,000) grants that they received from the Netherlands to support their transition process to become a business. But this year, Perfect Fit has begun to fundraise for their pre-seed funding round.

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Image Credit: Perfect Fit

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