Female Founders in Southeast Asia Receive Less Than 1% of VC

An International Women's Day campaign by HR-tech startup TruthWorks has renewed global attention on a persistent funding gap: all-female founding teams receive just 2% of global venture capital. In Asia, the data is worse.

TruthWorks Campaign Targets Investor Decision-Making

London-based TruthWorks launched "Dressed for the Yes" on International Women's Day, recreating the visual template of tech startup funding announcements. Co-founders Emily Firth and Rhiannon Stroud, alongside Director of Product Sophie Drummond, posed in identical black T-shirts and casual backdrops, mirroring the aesthetic typically associated with funded founding teams.

The campaign's message challenges investors directly. "If we match your template and you're still not investing, the problem isn't how women show up. It's how you decide who's worth a yes," said Stroud.

The 2% figure cited by TruthWorks is corroborated by PitchBook data, which shows the share of global VC received by all-female founding teams has remained essentially flat since 2008. In 2024, female-only teams received US$6.7 billion of a total US$289 billion deployed globally.

Southeast Asia Falls Below the Global Benchmark

For Asian markets, the regional picture is more acute. Women-only founding teams in Southeast Asia raised just US$138.3 million in H1 2025, representing 0.97% of total regional VC. That figure falls below the already-critical 2% global average.

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Singapore captured 96.6% of all female founder funding across Southeast Asia in the same period, driven by government programs like Startup SG and institutional investors including Temasek and GIC. That concentration creates a misleading regional picture. Female founders in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines received a near-negligible share of available capital.

India presents a parallel data point. Women-only founding teams raised an estimated US$1.8 to US$2.2 billion in 2024 against a total Indian VC market of US$12.5 billion, representing approximately 2.6%. Activity is concentrated in fintech, SaaS, and e-commerce, primarily in Bengaluru.

China shows more gender-neutral investment behavior, with analysts attributing this to profitability-first decision-making and relationship networks rather than founder demographics. Estimates place female-founded Chinese startup funding at US$3 to US$4 billion in 2024, though regulatory uncertainty continues to suppress overall deal volumes.

Investor Composition Drives Funding Outcomes

The data on investor composition is direct. VC firms with 30% or more female partners invest 4.7 times more in women-led startups than all-male firms. Female angel investors allocate 35% of their capital to women-founded startups, compared to 13% for male angel investors.

The funding gap also compounds as companies grow. Female-founded teams receive 3.2% of seed-stage capital, falling to 1.8% at Series C and beyond, according to available data.

Singapore-based Accelerating Asia has built a portfolio where 40% of ventures are female-led, roughly four times the regional VC average of approximately 10%. The firm attributes this to structural changes including a Gender Advisory Group and child-friendly program environments.

Regional Initiatives Aim to Close the Gap

The Global Private Capital Association and Investing in Women launched a Southeast Asia Women Investors Directory in 2024, profiling firms including LeapFrog Investments, Foxmont Capital Partners, and Navis Capital Partners. The initiative is designed to expand gender-focused investing among regional fund managers.

India's Nykaa is frequently cited by analysts as a benchmark for female-founded business outperformance in Asia, supporting TruthWorks' central claim that women-led businesses outperform despite receiving a fraction of available capital.

The TruthWorks campaign has drawn attention ahead of the broader IWD news cycle. No campaign performance metrics were available at time of publication.