Financing women entrepreneurs dreams | The Saha fund

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Every woman has the power to shine one day. Women have the intuitive perspective to many things, and they have the perfect ability to bring various ideas to the table. Yes, women can reach their true potential, and Ankita Vashistha is a real example of this. Creating a platform where women can step up and speak, she created a new balance for women to explore the new world of innovation by financing women entrepreneurs dreams and ideas.

The Co-Founder and the CEO of Saha Funds is an investor in different countries like India, Philippine, Singapore, UK, and the USA. Ms. Ankita Vashistha, a 29-year-old lady, put the foundations of Saha Funds in 2015. She has a degree of M.Sc from Cranfield School of Management and a degree from MSR institute of technology, India.

The background of Ankita was from an advisory, investments, and venture capital sector. At Tholons, Ms. Ankita managed many advisory groups, research organizations, many educational and investments groups in different countries. She worked at the post of principal at a firm where she managed the investment of other companies at a start-up point. Before joining this, she worked at Aureos Capital and remained a part of investor’s team and Global Funds Management Team.  She also served in Swadesh Essfil Private Limited as a Director. She had an eight-year-experience portfolio in private and ventured capital in many countries of the world. Vashistha worked very progressively in the beginning in India, Philippines, Singapore, UK, the USA to evaluate, source and monitor for starting-up many companies.

Ms. Ankita worked very closely with many portfolio companies in bringing them up to create value and for expanding them globally. She invested in mobile industry, e-commerce, research, and education department. These start-up points became the motivator for her to take some bold steps. In her every meeting, Ms. Ankita noticed that most of the startups came from women. Even she was the only woman investor, but they never dare to come at front. She said: “I wanted to create a platform where women are made to take the first step. This fun role, not just a supporting role.”

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She was the first kind of venture capital funds in the country which focused on promoting women entrepreneurs’ ideas. At Tholons Capital Office in Bengaluru, she not only put more in the startups but also invested in senior management that made products and services, targeting the companies where the workforce was of half women. The fund raised an initial corpus of 100 crores, and the investors included former Infosys chief financial officer and serial angel investor Mohandas Pai, By meeting on chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and former Accenture India chairman Avinash Vashistha, who was also Ankita’s father. Vashistha said at the Tholons Capital office in Bengaluru that they would not restrict these funds to startup only. He said: “We’re investing in the best women talent available in the country.”

Women face a lot of challenges and a lack of confidence in the start-ups. Although women are very talented, sometimes lack of funds becomes a hurdle in their path to success.

Ms. Ankita worked for women entrepreneurship. She is a very experienced venture capital investor who worked in public as well as private sectors. She is the 1^st woman enterprise founder. Saha Funds was the first venture that used to work for digital health in India. Although foreign funding improves health sector in India Saha funds took great initiatives to promote digital health sector especially in India. The pace of the digital health funding in the first half of 2016 is record-breaking, whereas, in the year 2014 and 2015, the funding reached a limit of $2B.

You can contact Ms. Ankita on her email id that is [email protected] and can also join her on her Linkedin profile. https://in.linkedin.com/in/ankitavashistha. The central office of the foundation is in Bangalore at No.346, 17th Cross, Dollars Colony, Off New Bel Road, Bangalore, KA – 560094 No. 70, 2nd Floor, Grace Towers, Above Navneet Motors, Millers Road, Bangalore – 560052.

In the end, it is the conviction in business, the size of the market and the opportunity that matters, not who is coming to the pitch. Gender never matters as well. But the reality of the matter is that from every ten men only a couple of females take the initiative and start working. However, such types of motivated women become the founders of the great ideas. The only thing that females should do is “Believe in themselves and step forward” to stand against inequalities. This change will bring a systematic revolution in the society.

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