Driving Inclusive Growth Through Gender Lens Investing

On March 2nd, USAID-supported SAMRIDH Healthcare Blended Finance Facility implemented by IPE Global co-hosted a panel discussion with Concordia titled “Driving Inclusive Growth Through Gender Lens Investing”. The panel was led by Ritika Pandey, Associate Director, Health, Nutrition and WASH, IPE Global. The featured panelists included: Neeta Rao, Senior Health Specialist, USAID, Mitali Nikore, Founder Nikore Associates, Suhani Mohan, Co-Founder, Saral Designs and Avishek Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Caspian Debt. The discussion focused on the role of women entrepreneurs in promoting sustainable and inclusive economic development in emerging economies, the roadblocks faced by women entrepreneurs, the business case for investing in women-led businesses, and pathways to support women-led businesses. The panel also highlighted the importance of the Gender Lens Investing toolkit prepared by SAMRIDH, which considers the challenges faced by women at each stage of the investment life cycle and enables financial institutions to integrate gender focus in the overall investment criteria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PKz34fHXjQ&ab_channel=Concordia

Moderator :

Ritika Pandey, Associate Director, Health, Nutrition and WASH, IPE Global

Panellists:

1. Neeta Rao, Senior Health Specialist, USAID
2. Mitali Nikore, Founder, Nikore Associates
3. Suhani Mohan, Co-Founder, Saral Designs
4. Avishek Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Caspian Debt.

On March 2nd, USAID-supported SAMRIDH Healthcare Blended Finance Facility implemented by IPE Global co-hosted a panel discussion with Concordia titled “Driving Inclusive Growth Through Gender Lens Investing”.

The panel was led by Ritika Pandey, Associate Director, Health, Nutrition and WASH, IPE Global. The featured panellists included: Neeta Rao, Senior Health Specialist, USAID, Mitali Nikore, Founder Nikore Associates, Suhani Mohan, Co-Founder, Saral Designs and Avishek Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Caspian Debt.

The discussion focused on the role of women entrepreneurs in promoting sustainable and inclusive economic development in emerging economies, the roadblocks faced by women entrepreneurs, the business case for investing in women-led businesses, and pathways to support women-led businesses.

The panel also highlighted the importance of the Gender Lens Investing toolkit prepared by SAMRIDH, which considers the challenges faced by women at each stage of the investment life cycle and enables financial institutions to integrate gender focus in the overall investment criteria.

The discussion emphasized the importance of women’s perspectives as decision-makers in social enterprises and the challenges they face during their journeys as entrepreneurs. The experts spoke about how women bring experiences from their lives which enable them to create impactful and inclusive solutions for the social and economic empowerment of women. The propensity of women leaders to initiate businesses which addressed pressing social issues such as education and healthcare was also underlined.

The experts established the business case for investing in women-led enterprises by calling attention to research and evidence that put the spotlight on the sound financial performance of women-led businesses. It was highlighted that women-led companies perform better than men-run companies in terms of return on investment (RoI). They are also more likely to have their loan applications approved and pay their loans on time – with lower repayment delinquency rates as compared to men. However, it was also pointed out that women only make up 29% of all borrowers.

Besides pointing out the social stigma around the participation of women in the workforce, structural challenges faced by women entrepreneurs were also highlighted. Lack of women investors and funders that result in a low understanding of women-oriented products and services, their perception as risk-averse, lack of networking and mentorship opportunities, low participation of women in STEM-related workforce and limited access to credit and capital emerged as key challenges.

Solutions to the challenges included crafting gender-inclusive policies to increase the participation of women in decision-making roles in financial institutions, providing support to women in STEM fields by way of seed funds to scale up their innovations, facilitating the loan application process for women, and increasing access to networking and mentoring opportunities for women entrepreneurs through promoting cohort-based and cross learning platforms which include a variety of women-led enterprises.

The need for a framework to examine the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs at each stage of the investment cycle, including pre-application, application, selection, and post-application support was discussed. The Gender Lens Investing (GLI) toolkit was proposed as an effective solution with qualitative and quantitative tools to help investors make informed decisions on gender-inclusive investment portfolios. The GLI toolkit was described as a product of a systematic study of challenges women-led enterprises face and how specific challenges can be overcome at each stage of the investment cycle process.

The discussion emphasized the importance of women’s perspectives as decision-makers in social enterprises and the challenges they face during their journeys as entrepreneurs. The experts spoke about how women bring experiences from their lives which enable them to create impactful and inclusive solutions for the social and economic empowerment of women. The propensity of women leaders to initiate businesses which addressed pressing social issues such as education and healthcare was also underlined.

The experts established the business case for investing in women-led enterprises by calling attention to research and evidence that put the spotlight on the sound financial performance of women-led businesses. It was highlighted that women-led companies perform better than men-run companies in terms of return on investment (RoI). They are also more likely to have their loan applications approved and pay their loans on time – with lower repayment delinquency rates as compared to men. However, it was also pointed out that women only make up 29% of all borrowers.

Besides pointing out the social stigma around the participation of women in the workforce, structural challenges faced by women entrepreneurs were also highlighted. Lack of women investors and funders that result in a low understanding of women-oriented products and services, their perception as risk-averse, lack of networking and mentorship opportunities, low participation of women in STEM-related workforce and limited access to credit and capital emerged as key challenges.

Solutions to the challenges included crafting gender-inclusive policies to increase the participation of women in decision-making roles in financial institutions, providing support to women in STEM fields by way of seed funds to scale up their innovations, facilitating the loan application process for women, and increasing access to networking and mentoring opportunities for women entrepreneurs through promoting cohort-based and cross learning platforms which include a variety of women-led enterprises.

The need for a framework to examine the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs at each stage of the investment cycle, including pre-application, application, selection, and post-application support was discussed. The Gender Lens Investing (GLI) toolkit was proposed as an effective solution with qualitative and quantitative tools to help investors make informed decisions on gender-inclusive investment portfolios. The GLI toolkit was described as a product of a systematic study of challenges women-led enterprises face and how specific challenges can be overcome at each stage of the investment cycle process.

Some key takeaways from various discussions are as follows:

Challenges faced by women entrepreneurs:

• Decisions are based on the understanding of the product by investors. When the investors are men, they sometimes do not understand women-focused products.
• Due to the low representation of women in start-up events, it is difficult for women entrepreneurs to navigate conversations and build networks.
• There are more than 8 million women-led businesses in India, but that represents just about 14% of the total businesses. Women constitute only 29% of all borrowers.
• It is necessary to increase the participation of women investors to overcome structural issues with respect to access to capital and networks

Increasing participation of women in the investor ecosystem:

• Financial institutions must implement inclusive policies to increase the participation of women. Flexible work opportunities, paying for childcare, and encouraging paternity leaves are some of the policies which help to retain women.
• Engaging with accelerators and incubators and encouraging them to add a gender lens to their curriculum and training for entrepreneurship programs.
• Studying representation of women-led enterprises at a secondary level and looking at some of the states’ or districts’ data on women’s entrepreneurship, or data from industry associations can help investors understand the intersections where women entrepreneurs are concentrated and accordingly diversify their portfolios.

Takeaways from USAID for encouraging women entrepreneurship through philanthropic investments:

• An ecosystem approach that allows women a fair chance in STEM and financial sectors is necessary to provide support by way of access to mentoring, networks, access to markets and capital to nurture them in these fields and help them realise their potential.
• USAID’s Women in Science Mentoring program supports women in faculty positions in STEM fields at higher education institutions through skill development, enabling access to networks and providing seed funding.
• USAID is also supporting Gender Lens Investing (GLI) for social enterprises and businesses under SAMRIDH so they can sustain and scale up.

Key recommendations from the Gender Lens Investing toolkit prepared by SAMRIDH

• Promoting GLI requires a multi-faceted approach involving education, data analysis, investment screening, fostering collaborations, and gathering appropriate evidence for advocacy.
• The framework considers the distinction between women-led, women-owned, women-managed, and women-focused enterprises. For example, a man-owned enterprise which predominantly serves women or benefits women can qualify for a gender lens investment. Making such distinctions allows for women-focused enterprises to broaden the horizons for the inclusion of women.
• It is necessary to incorporate the experiences of women at each stage of the investment lifecycle.
• Easing the application process and providing post-application technical support for the optimum deployment of funds is essential for enabling access to capital for women entrepreneurs.
• GLI toolkit provides for quantification of the level of gender inclusivity in a woman-owned, led, focused, or managed enterprise. This enables investors to assess how eligible an organization is for gender lens investing.

Organiser:
SAMRIDH

Venue:
Virtual

Contact Us:
samridh@ipeglobal.com