About IWEF
The Indonesia Women Empowerment Fund (IWEF) is a purpose-driven venture capital fund, which is dedicated to supporting women founders, and solutions to improve livelihoods for women in Indonesia.
We support and invest in early stage startups, which include women in the founding team, which are disrupting the status quo through technology and innovation, and whose solutions disproportionately improve the livelihoods of women.
Our Vision
A future where women can realize their full potential as entrepreneurs, and are empowered to pursue careers and equitable economic opportunities according to their life choices, while driving growth for the whole economy
Our Mission
To address the barriers faced by 90 million women in Indonesia, who strive for better livelihoods
Our Strategy
To support and invest in promising women founders, whose high-growth startups are helping to break down barriers to better livelihoods for women across Indonesia
Who Are the People behind IWEF?
IWEF is jointly operated by Moonshot Ventures and YCAB Ventures. The fund is sponsored by the Australian Government through its Investing in Women program
An impact investing firm that brings together the expertise of seasoned investors and former founders, with 50 years of collective experience in working with startups. With a focus on “tech for good” in Southeast Asia, the team has deployed over $40 million to support mostly women-led startups.
The impact investing arm of YCAB Foundation, one of Indonesia’s leading advocates and capital providers to women-led small enterprises. To date, YCAB has brought impact to more than 4.1 million underprivileged beneficiaries through education and economic access including entrepreneurship, while bringing greater financial inclusion to almost 200,000 micro-entrepreneurial women. In early 2021, YCAB was ranked #29 globally ‘Top NGO / SGO’, by NGO Advisor in Geneva.
Catalysing inclusive economic growth in Asia-Pacific through 8 impact funds that focus on improving gender equality in the workplace and ensuring greater economic participation for women as employees and entrepreneurs. As IWEF’s strategic sponsor, Investing in Women provides catalytic first loss capital, governance and oversight.
Why Gender Lens Investing?
IWEF is Indonesia’s first dedicated Gender Lens Investing (GLI) fund. We apply a gender lens throughout everything we do - from the gender balanced team that operates IWEF, to the women founders we support, and through to the women that benefit from the startups’ disruptive solutions as customers and beneficiaries.
GLI isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good for business: women-led businesses typically perform better, and women’s customer segments often represent overlooked investment opportunities.
Tackling the gender funding gap
Less than 5% of VC funding went to women-led startups in Southeast Asia in 2020
Improving performance
Women-led or gender balanced startup teams have a higher ROI and achieve faster exits than all-male teams
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