About 17.9% of investment decision-makers at Southeast Asia-headquartered venture investors are women, finds the latest report from DealStreetAsia – DATA VANTAGE.
According to the 2024 edition of the Women in Southeast Asia’s VC Ecosystem report, the proportion of female investment decision-makers has remained relatively stagnant since 2023 (17.4%).
The report examined over 330 active venture investors—venture capital firms, venture debt providers, accelerators, and incubators—in the region. It defines an investment decision-maker as one with the authority to lead deals, sign cheques, and sit on the board of portfolio companies.
Southeast Asia’s performance is on par with the US, where, according to a recent report by the advocacy group All Raise, about 18% of decision-makers at venture capital firms are female.
According to the DATA VANTAGE report, the total number of female venture investment decision-makers in Southeast Asia has grown by 16.3% year on year to 143. In comparison, the number of male decision-makers increased by 12% to 654.
About 67.2% of regional venture investors still lack a woman in an investment decision-making role, roughly the same as last year. In 2022, about 77% of investors had no female cheque writer.
“My hope is that we will reach 50% female fund managers in the next decade, while supporting more female founders’ pipeline and their successes. And that, in turn, we will see closer to 50% female founders in all funds’ portfolios,” said Alina Truhina, CEO and managing partner at The Radical Fund.
“My concern is that many still view diversity as the morally “right thing to do” rather than the “smart thing to do.” This perception often leads to diversity being treated as an add-on rather than an embedded practice across the fund’s team, processes, investment thesis, portfolio construction, and value creation efforts. However, Diversity & Inclusion makes strong business sense, and there is now ample data to support this,” she added.
A 2019 report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), RockCreek, and Oliver Wyman found that private equity and venture capital funds with gender-balanced senior investment teams generated 10-20% higher returns compared with those with a majority of male or female leaders. The report examined the performance and gender diversity data for more than 700 funds.
The underrepresentation of women among investors is seen as a significant contributor to the gender funding gap faced by startups. In Southeast Asia, female-founded startups—defined as those with at least one female founder—bagged 18.3% of the total private capital raised in 2023. This performance was a step up from the 12.6% share of funding garnered by female-founded startups in 2022.
Another encouraging sign is that funding for female-founded startups saw a lower year-on-year decline of 29.5% last year than the more than 51% drop in overall startup funding.
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