According to a recent Bloomberg report, there is a growing trend among Asia rich families to invest in areas with a female focus. This investment strategy, described as “gender lens investing” is rapidly gaining momentum, despite being a niche area in the investment industry.
Globally, some US$7.7 billion was deployed for gender lens investing and this amount likely rose to US$20 billion last year as more people saw this strategy as a way to outperform.
This investment trend is of particular importance because as a result of Covid-19, women faced discrepancies in salaries and access to capital. The Bloomberg article also noted that funding to female founders fell 31% in 2020 as compared to a drop of 16% for all-male teams. We hope that the growing interest by Asia’s wealthy families in investing in companies with a female focus will address the funding concerns faced by female entrepreneurs, particularly during times like this that forced more women to start on their own business as a solution to the financial hardship caused by the pandemic.