In addition to launching APAC Women Founders, Simona Ventures provides mentoring and funding for female founders
Inspired by her own experiences working in the tech sector since 2011, Putri Izzati took the initiative to build a platform to support female entrepreneurs in Indonesia. Called Simona Ventures, Izzati and her team have the mission to help female founders receive end-to-end support to build their business, enabling them to compete in the male-dominated startup community.
“Together with Google Indonesia-backed Digitaraya, Simona Ventures has the ambition to go beyond providing investment for female founders, which has been difficult to obtain. We also want to provide them the opportunity to grow their business,” Izzati said.
Indonesia is a Southeast Asian country that has been experiencing significant growth of startups; it is also one of the most attractive market for global venture capital (VC) firms. But Izzati noted that there is still limited number of female founders receiving supports in the form of investment and other opportunities from VC firms and related parties.
“This eventually becomes our focus in Simona Ventures: To provide support in the form of networking and education so that companies that are being founded or led by women are able to secure funding,” Izzati said.
Izzati added that the firm expects to produce a new role model that young entrepreneurs, particularly women, can look up to. Especially since there are currently only a small number of such role models available, both in Indonesia or abroad.
“If we look at the example of countries such as the United States, they have begun to place more women in the C-level in order to minimise gender gap in a company. This hasn’t been done to its full capacity in Indonesia,” Izzati said.
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Launching Simona Accelerator APAC Women Founders
One of the routine agenda that Simona Ventures just launched in February is the first batch of the APAC Women Founders, which is set to be held twice a year. Initiated by Simona Accelerator, the event will pick 12 best women-founded or women-led startups.
Focussing on Asia Pacific startups, these startups will then be provided with assistance, support, and investment to expand their business to Indonesia. Winners of the programme will also have the opportunities to receive mentorship by Google and attend a special programme in South Korea.
“Even though we are focussing on Asia Pacific startups who aim to enter Indonesia, selected Indonesian startups can also get the opportunity to receive mentorship and regional business expansion support,” Izzati said.
The selected startups are required to have female founders and the mission to close the gender gap. This will further enable Simona Ventures and its partners to achieve their end goal of giving more opportunities to female founders to grow their business.
“We also want to give support after the programme has ended. One of our plans is to develop an alumni programme, so that new and former participants can meet and network after the programme has ended,” Izzati said.
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The article Fokus Simona Ventures Dukung “Female Founders” di Asia Pasifik was written in Bahasa Indonesia by Yenny Yusra for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.
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