Only 11% female-led biz attain seed funding

Women entrepreneurs in emerging markets face a daunting gender finance gap when it comes to growing their start-ups, a research by International Finance Corporation (IFC) showed.
Only 11 percent of enterprises that attain seed funding are female-led, 
finding revealed.

Research developed by IFC and the World Bank Group Gender Innovation Lab, in partnership with Village Capital, shows that despite women leading half the start-ups that participate in accelerators, they continue to face greatly unequal access to capital. 

The research data shows acceleration increases the amount of equity male-led start-ups raise 2.6 times more than women-led start-ups. The persistent gender financing gap cannot be easily attributed to differences in the quality of the start-ups, suggesting that investor bias and risk perception may 
play a role.

To help tackle the financing gap that women entrepreneurs still face, particularly in emerging markets, IFC and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) launched a new call for applications for IFC ScaleX—a performance-based initiative that will provide an award of up to US $ 25,000 to business accelerators that have helped women-led companies in emerging markets raise equity financing. 

IFC ScaleX seeks to reduce the gender gap in equity finance between male and women-led start-ups by providing financial incentives that will encourage accelerators to increase their focus on actively helping women-led startups to fundraise capital post their accelerator programs.