A watershed year for women-led startups in India

The Morning

Context

Business

Harveen Ahluwalia

Mumbai

23 October 2019

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So far, 2019 has been a standout year for women-led startups in India. Of the top 150 startups by funding in the first six months of the year, an unprecedented 17.3% had women as founders or co-founders. To put that in perspective, the same figure was about 10% for the full year of 2018, and had largely remained stagnant earlier, at 12% in 2016 and 2017, according to data from market research firm Venture Intelligence.

“We can see more and more women get funded around us,” says Ashwini Asokan, founder and chief executive officer at the artificial intelligence company Mad Street Den and its automation platform Vue.ai. (Vue.ai in April raised $17 million in its Series B round of funding.)

Globally, too, women-founded and co-founded startups have been gaining ground, with 2018 seeing an all-time high of $40 billion going

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