Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Karandaaz Pakistan, with support from UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), has launched a new financing programme to improve access to finance for women businesses. This new initiative, titled “Women Ventures”, will start accepting applications from eligible women-led and owned businesses on a rolling basis throughout the year. Women Ventures (WV) has evolved from Karandaaz’s earlier pilot programme-Women Entrepreneurship Challenge (WEC)-which successfully ran for three consecutive years and has made investments of PKR 340 million in 18 women-led businesses and generated approximately PKR 700 million in revenue for these businesses and supported over 900 jobs.
As part of WV, Karandaaz will be entering into partnerships with co-investors and market developers to serve a larger number of women enterprises and to strengthen the ecosystem supporting this market segment. Accredited institutional partners that are interested in pipeline-sharing and or co-investing can apply to become part of the WV initiative. Currently Fatima Gobi Ventures – a joint venture between Fatima Ventures (Pvt.) Limited and Gobi Partners, Social Innovation Lab, and Telenor Velocity have already partnered with Karandaaz on the WV programme.
WV is open to businesses from all sectors and applicants may apply from anywhere in the country. Businesses with at least 51% or majority shareholding by a woman who has a direct role in the management are eligible to apply for WV financing. Ideally, the business should have operational history of at least 3 years and revenue (sales) of at least PKR 5 million in the last 12 months. In exceptional cases, a business with an operational history of less than 3 years may also be considered provided it is generating sufficient revenues and demonstrates high potential for scalability and growth.
Ali Sarfraz, CEO Karandaaz said, “WV is an institutionalized and scaled-up version of the women entrepreneurship challenge programme which was launched in 2017. WV will support high growth, scalable, women-led enterprises in Pakistan; a segment that has traditionally faced a negative bias in accessing growth capital through formal financial channels. WV has a unique approach because growth capital provision is augmented by customized business development services that helps maximise chances of success of women-led businesses.”