Rinchi
TechInAfrica – The United States-based venture capital firm, Kudu Ventures, has announced a new venture capital investment fund that fully focuses on female entrepreneurs. To support this project, Kudu Ventures will invest $1 million dedicated to over 100 homegrown female startups within the next two years in the East Africa region.
The new female-focused venture capital is called Kudu Women and initiated by Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Kudu Ventures, Noel Daniel and Betelhem Dessie, Project Manager at iCog Anyone Can Code.
According to a 20-year-old Betelhem, the initiative aims at empowering women entrepreneurs by providing the fund for young entrepreneurs.
“Unfortunately, at the moment we only have Samrawit, Founder of Ride & Betelhem Dessie, as the only tech female entrepreneur role models for the over 50 million women we have in Ethiopia,” said Daniel.
He continued, “This prompted us to launch Kudu Women, Ethiopia’s first women tech fund. We are dedicated to investing USD 1 million in over 100 African female entrepreneurs by 2022. Betelhem’s addition to Kudu also makes her the world’s youngest Venture Capital partner and we hope to set a trend in investing in young female tech entrepreneurs like Betelhem.”
“Given her proven track record and extensive experience in the tech/startup ecosystem, we believe that there is no one else better than Betelhem to invest, motivate and empower the next wave of female innovators. We have committed USD 1 million but are raising additional rounds of capital in 2020,” said Daniel told The Reporter.
Given the honor to lead the new women entrepreneurs-focused venture capital fund, Betelhem said, “I am ecstatic and excited to announce that I am joining Kudu Ventures as a Partner. We will soon be launching our female-entrepreneur fund, Kudu Women. This initiative will be a great addition to the Ethiopian market as it empowers women and pushes their involvement in tech as well as other business sectors. I am looking forward to providing capital & technical training for female founders through this new partnership.”
Source: thereporterethiopia.com and addisfotune.news
