shark tank — leap.club edition

venture capital funding has grown (and how!) over the last 30 years. what hasn’t grown, however, are the numbers for women in venture…

venture capital funding has grown (and how!) over the last 30 years. what hasn’t grown, however, are the numbers for women in venture capital. there are only a handful of women venture capitalists world over and that affects entrepreneurs, everywhere. as per a recent wikipedia article: the percentage of female vc partners is just shy of 5%.

but this number doesn’t tell the whole story. vc funding for women has been quite the hot topic in the last few years and 2020 saw the evolution of many women-led funds and incubators for female founders.

that being said, women are leading the way in venture capital and opening many doors for other women to lead and follow. at leap.club, we have 50+ women in vc and here are 10 of them who are changing the game, one investment at a time:

01 — bindu reddy — principal, rebright partners

bindu has been conquering the startup space in various roles over the past 11–12 years. at rebright partners, she leads deal sourcing, and communication management for portfolio companies like medikabazaar, inshorts and many more! prior to rebright, bindu was an avp leading a team of 15 analysts at tracxn — a market intelligence firm in india.

02 — divya venkatavaraghavan — principal, lightrock india

divya started her career as a lawyer with a strong desire to work in the impact space and currently leads investments in the education/skilling sector at lightrock india — a global private equity that invests between $10 and $50m in companies across key sectors such as food and agriculture, logistics, mobility, education, healthcare and many more. fun fact: divya is an armchair runner and closet historian.

03 — namita dalmia — partner, enzia ventures

an investor who is building an early-stage fund with 3 sectors in focus — healthcare, education, and environment, namita’s passion has led her to engage with governments at the central and state levels on their ed-tech initiatives and policies. her investment portfolio includes companies such as whitehat jr., vedantu, doubtnut, and more recently, a community-led professional network for women called leap.club where she continues to be a member ;)

04 — namrata hazarika — avp, tiw private equity

an engineer by profession, namrata started her career with infosys 12 years back. fast-forward to today — she’s a part of the core fund team at tiw private equity, an india-based sme-focused, sector-agnostic buyout private equity fund where she works directly with early-stage startups to improve their operational and growth strategies.

05 — nandini vishwanath — vc, antler india

nandini is the program director at antler india — a global early-stage vc that currently has over 350 companies worldwide and aims to deploy $100 million in the country over the next three years. prior to this, she was a founder and has also architected and led customer experience for urban ladder, as their first employee! nandini loves to write as a side hustle (we stalked!)

06 — navjot kaur — vice president, epiq capital

with almost a decade of experience in digital-first startups, navjot brings a deep understanding of the digital and e-commerce consumer space in her current role at epiq capital — a firm that recently announced $100 million in the first close for its second fund. prior to this at fireside ventures, she invested in consumer startups and also built the operating ecosystem to support portfolio companies. earlier in her career, navjot also co-led a 100 member team to create a well-known saas based global database for the pe and vc ecosystem. we secretly love her ‘table for one’ series on instagram ;)

07 — pearl agarwal — founder & md, eximius ventures

pearl is the founder of eximius ventures — a micro vc firm with a maiden fund of $10 million, which it aims to invest in early-stage startups. prior to eximius, pearl spent a decade across various investment roles in the us and uk, helping companies raise capital, facilitating multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions, and ensuring business development. ps. her travel count? 30 countries!

08 — prachi pawar — investment team, sequoia capital

prachi is an early-stage investor at sequoia capital, a global firm that needs no introduction. she is part of the investment team at surge — a rapid scale-up program for startups in india and southeast asia. before the start of her vc journey, prachi completed her mba from harvard business school.

09 — radhika agarwal — early stage vc, blume ventures

an early stage tech vc, radhika looks after consumer-focused investments that span across healthcare, education, media and ecommerce at blume ventures — a firm that is expected to grow over $500 million by march 2022. radhika is also building a kickass female founder network called lead tribe — an in-house networking and learning program within blume ventures, for stage female founders (we love that!).

10 — shrishti sahu — managing partner, ssv & angel investor

shrishti is an entrepreneur and angel investor currently building hustle hard ventures alongside her family office. prior to this, she was on the investment team of lumis partners and also had a stint with facebook — where she was responsible for chalking out the strategy for facebook to work with startups in india. shrishti is an avid investor in $100–150K pre-seed & seed rounds and her current portfolio is 30 companies.

want to connect with them? explore our membership at www.leap.club