Karandaaz, DFID launch financing programme for women businesses

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, said a press release issued on Monday.

This new initiative, "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 Rs340 million in 18 women-led businesses and generated approximately Rs 700million 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. The WV is open to businesses from all sectors and applicants may apply from anywhere in the country. Businesses with at least 51 percent 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 three years and revenue (sales) of at least Rs5 million in the last 12 months. In exceptional cases, a business with an operational history of less than three years may also be considered, provided it is generating sufficient revenues and demonstrates high potential for scalability and growth. More details about WV can be found at https://wv.karandaaz.com.pk/.

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."

Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, chairperson Karandaaz said, "The case for supporting women-led businesses is simple. In Pakistan only 8 percent of micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners are women. Access to finance is 6 percent and only 1 percent of women are engaged in entrepreneurial activities as opposed to 21 percent of men. Notwithstanding the dearth of capital and tough business conditions, a growing number of women-led businesses are emerging in both traditional and non-traditional areas. They are creating new jobs and introducing innovation in business practices. However, for a positive cyclical effect and to fully realise women's economic potential institutional mechanisms and partnerships are needed in terms of access to finance and supportive ancillary business development services.-PR

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