Achieving Women Equity (AWE) Funds, a gender-smart investment platform, has launched its maiden India-focused ₹350-crore fund.
The fund will invest in approximately 15 startups over the next five years in the areas of healthcare, climate and sustainability (clean, green, circular and water), food and agri, education, and fintech.
Registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the fund has investment support from blue-chip international and India-based institutional and high networth individual (HNI) investors, including Zia Mody (Founder, AZB & Partners), Soumya Rajan (Founder and CEO, Waterfield Advisors), Padma Chandrasekaran (formerly Gates Foundation), and Divya Sampath (formerly Microsoft, Cognizant, Service Now), among others.
AWE Funds aims to empower 30 million women by 2030 through investment in women-owned, -led, or -influenced companies.
Seema Chaturvedi, Founding Partner of AWE Funds, said, “Women’s participation as active contributors to a country’s GDP has lagged significantly. We believe that AWE Funds can play a positive role in catalysing this much-required change at a stage when it is most impactful through an effective allocation of capital.”
The fund pursues investments at an early stage of an enterprise’s lifecycle (Pre-Series A, Series A equity rounds) and seeks to assist companies with the diverse skills of its investment professionalsand global network of executives and advisors, to deliver market returns for its investors.
To date, the team collectively has over 120 years of operational, full-cycle investment, and exit experience in India and the US, and has mobilised and invested close to ₹2,800 crore, according to funding platform.