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As India marks another International Women's Day, the landscape for women-led tech startups remains largely unchanged. Year after year, their numbers continue to decline, and funding for these ventures is on a downward trajectory. This concerning trend has only been exacerbated by the prolonged funding winter.
In 2021, women-led startups secured a record $6.3 billion in funding. However, while male entrepreneurs raised $10.8 billion in 2024, women-led or women-founded companies attracted only $1 billion, according to data from market intelligence platform Tracxn.
Archana Jahagirdar, founder and managing partner of Rukam Capital, said the entrepreneurship ecosystem in India still doesn’t favour women.
“There isn't much of a supportive ecosystem for women. As an early stage founder, women don't have financial stability and are not able to stand up for their rights.” She added that many women choose professional jobs in the early years due to the comparatively greater financial security they offer.
Echoing Jahagirdar’s thoughts, Seema Chaturvedi, founder and managing partner of Achieving Women Equity (AWE) Funds, noted that progress in funding for women-led ventures has been minimal.
“There are striking examples of successful women entrepreneurs, but the fundamental reality is they are few and far between. 2021 was a frothy time when startups were getting funded but when the going got tough, the first ones to drop off the cliff were women founders,” she said.
Over the past five years, 2,432 startups have been founded with at least one female co-founder. The peak came in 2021, when 744 companies had women as co-founders. However, this upward momentum has since faltered, with only 155 such startups emerging in 2024—a sharp decline in women-led ventures.
Amid persistent challenges, women-led venture capital (VC) firms are championing female entrepreneurs through accelerator programmes while voicing concerns about limited funding flowing into women-led startups.
Women VCs, including Jahagirdar and Chaturvedi, believe that more women investors can make the fundraising process less intimidating for women founders.
Of the 14 companies Rukam Capital has invested in, 21 per cent have at least one-woman co-founder. These companies are The Indus Valley, Food Strong, and GO DESi.
"In the case of AWE Funds, six out of seven investments the firm has committed to are for women-led companies. In the future, we are going to make 100 per cent of our portfolio gender smart by the means of ownership, leadership, and supply chain,” Chaturvedi said.
She Capital is another early-stage fund that predominantly invests in female founders. Anisha Singh, founding partner of the firm, shared that out of the 14 investments to date, eight have already raised follow-on funding. She pointed out that barring one, all of these companies are either women-led or co-led.
The firm was also an investor in the lifestyle and personal care brand Clovia. Talking about the brand, Anisha said: “The founders have been amazing. They had the largest all-cash fashion exit where they got bought out by Reliance.” Reliance Retail Ventures acquired an 89 per cent equity stake in Purple Panda Fashions, which owns and operates Clovia.
Ankita Vashistha, managing partner of StrongHer by Arise Ventures, said the fund was established after she noticed that women founders lacked equal access to monetary resources and networking compared to their male peers. The firm recently announced the launch of the 2025 Startup Studio Cohort, in collaboration with SAP Labs India and Deloitte, to empower women-led tech startups.
“It’s about giving women-led startups the resources, partnerships, and platforms to scale their impact like never before. The next generation of unicorns will be built here. We are here to tilt the scales—to ensure that women-led startups don’t just participate in the future but define it,” Vashistha said.
Other accelerator programmes focusing on women include FoundHer by India Accelerator, part of the Global Accelerator Network, and AccelerateHer program by Amazon Web Services and Lightspeed Ventures.
