Why 8 in 10 LPs Still Don’t Back Women—And What Ankita’s Doing About It

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In a world where venture capital was once the exclusive domain of Silicon Valley. A new story is being written, and India is one of its most powerful chapters. Today on Billion Dollar Moves, we're in Bangalore, India's innovation capital to spotlight a market that's no longer just catching up, but boldly charting its own course.

With over a billion people online, a rising middle class, and a generation of entrepreneurs who aren't just replicating global models, but building for global scale. The India venture story has gone from copycat to category creator. But while capital is pouring in, the gaps remain, especially for women at the helm.

In this episode, we sit down with Ankita Vashistha, one of the earliest investors to bet on women in tech in India. From co-founding one of Singapore's first government backed funds to building Saha Fund, Ankita shares what it takes to build in markets that are complex, fast moving and still biased. 

If you've ever wondered what it means to build, bet and back as a next generation investor in one of the world's most dynamic venture markets, this conversation is for you. Ankita Vashistha from Arise Ventures.

[BDM Intro]

#1: From Copycat to Category Creator – The Rise of India as a Global Builder

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For years, India was seen as a market of imitators. Replicating Western models, localizing them, scaling them. But Ankita saw the shift—early.

Ankita: 

We've seen a huge boom in the past, of course, 20 years, but a lot of it just in the last 10 years. I always say that no, there was a time where, of course, you know, in India we were kind of building and copying whatever was happening, say in the US or the Western markets. Then there came a time where we were building here, but customizing for the Indian market.

And now, you know, thanks to, like you said, infusion of capital 5G networks, even the most remotest area of India, a huge billion people plus. You know, more and counting consumer, everybody wants to consume with data and, and the middle class, the emerging middle class is the power that has completely shifted the story for India and consumption and creation.

So now India has become a place where tech brands services are being built for the world. Yeah. So we're no longer only copying and we're no longer only customizing. We're actually building innovative Indian products or Indian LED mindset products flow out. We saw all this happen in the last kind of 10 years.

We also saw a lot of foreign infusion coming in, you know, like from the Soft Banks of the world with TE said kind of brands coming in. A lot of successful IPOs as well, so it's a very robust market. Of course, post COVID, there was an entire kind of slowdown in the venture capital industry globally, especially in India. 

There was such a huge ramp up in terms of healthcare digitization. Again, 5G Network, et cetera, that you know, the customer and the consumer consumption just surpassed everyone's imagination, right? And so everyone wants now built for this, you know, booming Indian market.

There was a time where everyone wanted only a small sector or small percentage of the population could have, you know, like bottled water or drinks, coke, whatever it may. Now, even someone sitting in a tier two three city has access to the best products. Thanks to, again, apps and you know, Amazon and all these things.

But there's also knowledge and awareness because of social media and digitization and content, because there's a lot of content now being made in India across all the different languages. So there's a lot of factors that have contributed into India becoming this amazing powerhouse story, but it's really powered by the population and just the way everything is changing in terms of the emerging of Gen Z, the demographics.

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With over a billion people online, rising 5G penetration, and an explosion of digitally fluent Gen Z consumers, Ankita recognized India’s potential not just as a consumer base—but as a creator class.

She backed early winners Uniphore, now the world’s largest conversational AI company born out of India and scaled in Palo Alto.

India's story has changed—from a follower to a force. And Ankita was one of the first to bet on it.

Ankita: 

I've had of course the unique experience of living, working and studying across US, UK and India. Born in the US and my parents moved back in the eighties. Ended up doing my engineering here, and then went back to the UK to do my MBA in finance. That's kind of when my career kick started. Spent the past, I guess, 16 years in private equity and venture capital. 

My initial five years in private equity in the UK, I used to work for the largest private equity fund, focused on emerging markets, managing $2 billion based in the London office with the leadership team.

I was very lucky that very early on I got to work with very senior people across all the functions of a fund. Everything from institutional fundraising, to global portfolio management, sitting IC deals, et cetera. Love the experience, love the scale companies can achieve with the right capital. 

And I'm originally of course from India, led me to move back to the region around 2012. Around that time was when venture capital was really picking up in this region. And because of our network and our work, I spent time between Singapore and India. Both were kind of really picking up. Singapore especially, there's a lot of initiatives for the Singapore government, incubate, tech led companies and for funds to set up shop to of course promote Singapore, Singapore economic activity.

And so I set up a tech incubator slash fund co-founded Wavemaker Labs. Yeah. Which was one of its first kind to get approval from the Singapore government, which basically meant they approved us, but they also invested along with us. It's a great ecosystem, great model. Made a bunch of investments and along with that success, I started spending time in India looking at early stage investments.

And now of course globally there are millions of angels and angel networks and all this stuff. But at that time, there was only one in the largest one called Indian Angel Network. Joined them, spent time with them. That was where all the best deals were coming in, great CXOs, investors investing. So I got a very good idea of the landscape in India.

Started making investments from that. And basically set up my first pool of money and fund to invest between India, Singapore, and we were looking at US companies. 'cause a lot of tech companies, even though they're maybe from India or Singapore, they also get domiciled or have a sales team and a co-founder in the US.

So from that initial set of companies invested in a company in India called Licious, which is today one of India's largest consumer brands. And then a company called Uniphore. They're now based in Palo Alto. They're the largest conversational AI company, but they came outta IA Cambridge Ross. But from Singapore, one of the companies that got a lot of tension and was one of our kind of success stories as well, was a company called Luxola, kind of like I think Asia's largest online cosmetic store. 

And we sold it to Sephora and it was run by Alexis, second time woman founder. And that's the company which got me thinking. And I guess being in the PE-VC space, I was already observing a lot of things about women in vc, women decision makers, women entrepreneurs, and I saw all the gaps.

I'm going for a demo day or I'm going for angel meet, or I'm going for any meeting. I'm not seeing women entrepreneurs presenting, even if they are, they're co-founders. The male co-founders presenting not the female co-founder, and say there is female founder who's coming and presenting. She's pretty much presenting to a room full of 10, 15 men.

And so if she's talking about a new way of woman clothing or she's talking about menopause or anything to do with women, you're seeing blank faces because men are not the users and therefore they don't need. And therefore they will not invest in it. So I saw this gap. I said, I realized there isn't a level playing field for women.

There aren't enough women decision makers to invest in Women and women are not getting that access to capital or opportunities to pitch. There's so many gaps, can we address this? So I was like, okay, you know, I'm, anyway, investing in early stage tech companies. Can we say that we wanna invest in the best woman led and woman consumer focused talent?

So that's when I kind of launched my fund. 

#2 Gender Lens ≠ Charity. It’s Alpha.

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In 2015, Ankita launched Saha Fund—India’s first gender lens VC fund. The timing? Controversial. The vision? Clear.

Ankita: 

I think when I started Saha Fund and almost a decade ago, there were so many glaring gaps, not just in India. It's a global phenomenon. It's happening everywhere. And of course in the US, because of things that happen, like Black Lives Matter, and in a lot of those things, a lot of things came into the limelight, investing in people of color, promoting diversity, all that stuff, right?

So then I realized that, okay, Saha Fund, of course, was an India based. Because we also got, for that first fund, a lot of support from the Indian government. I ended up raising a lot of money from amazing women and family offices and institutions in India. So like Mrs Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

To India's top corporate lawyer, Zia Mody. Someone like a Dr. Ranjan Pai who owns one of the top hospital chains in India, but also SIDBE, which is India's fund of funds, right. But I think it was great to get that support to really navigate these gaps. 

And they're still there. You know, I was sharing my story with you that, you know, it's been a decade, but yeah, and things have changed. You know, of course, in the past three, four years, a lot of new funds have come up to also look at women entrepreneurship or look at inclusivity, diversity, but a lot more needs to still happen at scale, a lot more LP focus In India, of course, every LP wants a return. But I think a lot more focus needs to be on seeing what else your capital is doing.

I'm not saying that everything related to diversity in women has to be impact, but there's a lot of amazing stuff that is happening when you invest in women. Like I always say, you invest in women. She's a woman leader. She'll hire two to three times more women in our organization. And therefore the culture that organization will teach you will end up building product or service that is more inclusive.

And, and I think those metrics or those changes need to be somehow, I feel mandated in terms of why you invest or what you invest in. Like for example, how, you know there's a mandate for how many number of women in the boards Yeah. Or women in leadership positions, especially for public markets. But I think this mindset needs to change across both public and private.

And I always see that, you know, of course there are a bunch of people that want to invest in this and they really believe in promoting this, but I think it's very important that in some way, other than a corporate world, some stuff is also mandated in terms of how you report things. For example, for a corporate, how many women do you hire?

How many women do you promote? What's the pay wage gap? If you're made to report is when you start thinking about it. And therefore implement it and then therefore change it and then have something, an outcome to report. The same needs to happen, I guess, in venture capital as well, where we [00:13:00] not only of course, report great number returns, but we also talk about the value add that investment need to the company and how other outcomes were achieved.

We see typically has been just, you know, of course it's a capital allocation. It's the type of asset you invest in. But we as a fund, we believe of course, in, you know, promoting all of those different things, but also the, the way we invest the investment style has to be very hands-on, very go to market. So we really think about the value add that you create with us.

We're of course an early stage fund. Over the decade, there has been a lot of new funds that have been fun. Yeah. But also what I realized is that, you know, my previous fund. Was a hundred Crore, you know, which is like maybe what a $15 million fund. And right now my fund is a ₹500 Crore fund. So of course when I raised the previous fund, it was a very different experience.

Because A, when you talk to a family office or an HNI, venture capital itself is an asset, was a new asset class. A typical family office or HNI, especially, I guess from an India context, they wanna reinvest in their own business, or invest in real estate, or the public markets or other strategic businesses.

Venture capitals, you go and tell them that I'm looking at women in tech as well. Immediately they bracket you into CSR or Social Impact. So they're like, oh, sp you're a social impact fund. And I'm like, no, no. 

I'm investing in the best tech companies out there. Tech focused, tech enabled companies. But hey, I'm also seeing are these led by women? Or is the woman consumer of focus, I'm adding another amazing layer onto it. I'm actually doing double the work. Yeah. And taking a lot more care in my investments. 

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Despite a portfolio that includes five unicorns, she still faces LP bias. That’s why she changed her strategy.

Ankita: 

Yeah. And I'm very loudly and unapologetically saying that I wanna back a woman founder. Mm-hmm. So yes. If there are two founders, same pedigree, exactly same idea, same everything. I wanna back the woman at all based on merit.

I'm not doing social work here. I'm not giving a grant. I'm not doing any of that, right? And so unfortunately, even after so many years, that perception has not changed. The good thing is that because I'm now three funds old, invested in 50 plus companies, we've had five unicorns. 

So you've had a great track record. So that speaks for itself. But I realized that, that that woman's story was still being very undermined. And for LPs, for people that I meet before I tell them about my amazing track record and everything else. If I go first with the women's story, they're like, oh, you know, okay, this is social impact, you know, whatever, we'll see. We'll think about it. And then I realized that if I go with…

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Returns.

Ankita: 

With returns and I go with my tech story, which I anyway add on, but I thought this is a great way, then the perception is different. So the same LP will give you a meeting and you say, this is a tech fund and this is, and not necessarily a woman name, and all those things, and then they, they give you a meet.

So there are inherent biases in the ecosystem. I think I recently came across a survey, they interviewed like the top CXOs. Or the top LPs as well. And I think 8 out of 10 said that they still wouldn't invest in women privately. Probably nobody would say that. And it's the truth, right?

Things are changing and I think my thesis and my ideas has always been that obviously if there was a level playing field, no necessarily need a woman centric fund, but to make something happen, you have to bring about a focus, you have to talk about it. You have to amplify it. You have to take that hard stand, but your success and your track record then speaks for you and then takes you forward.

But unless you talk about that and amplify it and you become your own cheerleader, nothing changes right? And even the largest fund, they'll have hundred, and then they'll have like five for women and they'll do a lot PR around that. But so it's five for women. And I've spoken to founders who've said, you know that because they get that five.

It's very hard to raise the next round of fund because they think that they got fired from a very small allocation or from a grant kind of view. 

There's a lot that needs to happen and I think it just, it will change with a continuous focus, talking about it, making it mainstream. But like I said, there needs to be a lot more institutions investing in funds like us and then reporting those numbers and talking about the success metrics. 

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Her message to LPs is clear: investing in women is not about ticking boxes—it’s about backing undervalued, outperforming talent.

Ankita: 

So one success story is of course, I'll talk about two. One is from my previous funk. We invest in India's first online fitness platform. So you, of course in the US you have ClassPass, right? But we didn't have anything similar here. So she kind of launched that. She helped bring a lot of gyms and yoga centers and wellness centers online.

The business also pivoted into more digital stuff during COVID, but they also got bought over. So they became the second biggest actually, over time. And because CultFit came in. Yeah. And then CultFit acquired them. So that was a great kind of story and exit for us and a great woman founder.

Separately in our current portfolio, we're investors in a company called asis, which has now become globally the third largest AI powered e-commerce accelerator platform, which basically helps brands manage their e-commerce presence and supply chain management. They do half a billion in GMV, a hundred million in revenues. 

This is a serial entrepreneur, woman founder. She's built B2C businesses. She's built our marketing companies, MarTech, and then she kind of put both together and launched this and very quickly replaced other big names in the ecosystem. And she's onto be a unicorn in six months. But great kind of examples of, you know, women founders hustling, focusing on career and being kind of disrupting the market. 

We've had failures as well. I think in early stage, you know, it's always, you know, in the fund it's a portfolio, right? Sure. You always have those, you know, one or two or three breakout companies, a bunch of above average companies, and there will be some of those failures.

But I think the failures have always been because maybe they're companies that took too long to monetize, especially consumer facing companies, you know, they need a lot more money. For marketing, for customer outreach, first wiring that customer, and if you don't quickly start monetizing and then, and you don't raise an next round of funding, then you get stuck.

Yeah. And then you have to kind of just shut shop. So we've, we've had one or two maybe in the ed tech space, because especially I think in India, I've seen in the ed tech space platforms that are maybe doing a lot of stuff around, uh, courses that are like part of your high school curriculum, right. Or part of an entrance test to get into medical engineering.

People love doing that. But when it comes to extracurriculars, it's a nice to have, it's not a need. And so those don't scale up that fast. 

#3 The Venture Capital Playbook Needs a Reboot—For India

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For all its growth, India is still operating under venture rules written in Silicon Valley. Ankita argues—it’s time for a rewrite.

Ankita: 

Venture capital is a very American led. Framework or template, for example, how it's, it's very easy to have a safe note in, in the us right? Mm-hmm. Where you just, you raise money and a safe in that in India you can't do that. 

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Ankita calls for a localized model of venture capital—one that fits the regulatory, cultural, and economic context of India’s fast-changing landscape.

And she’s not just talking—she’s doing. Her new fund is five times the size of her last, and she’s partnering with local institutions to build an entirely new ecosystem—one that reflects Indian realities, not American templates.

Ankita: 

There are a lot of regulations in India because of the fact that, um, where so many people and people need to be educated or made aware of what investments they're doing, what you're not doing.

And of course, with the new government and how it is, people want. More people to invest within India, there's lot of domestic regulations and there's a lot of limitations on how money is invested outside of India, but also the type of businesses that you're funding. Maybe the time period, the exits. It's not still a very robust exit market.

Now, of course, in the past few years, it's changing a lot of domestic capital, a lot of businesses and enterprises investing or acquiring. Otherwise it was all kind of really pushed by foreign capital coming in. Even at the exit stage, a lot of the templates and frameworks were from foreign made business.

So I think there's a huge need for, yes, for venture capital in India to transform to a little bit more domestic model or more customized towards the domestic business ecosystem. 

#4 From Capital Allocator to Company Builder

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Ankita knows capital alone isn’t enough. That’s why she evolved her model from pure fund management to full-scale acceleration.

Ankita:
Of course in the US, we have Y Combinator. We have Sequoia Arc, a bunch of these programs. But what I said to myself three years ago that, you know, we're a fund we're investing in in our portfolio companies, but our investment styles also evolve, like I said, from just new capital allocator, right.

To a go to market strategic investment partner. Can we do something like this on a program level for the wider ecosystem? Mm-hmm. And especially keeping women founders in mind because they need different types of tools and different types of resources. To help them kickstart their business. 

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Her accelerator now receives over 5,000 applications from 20+ countries annually. They accept 100 founders a year and invest in the top 10.

The goal? To accelerate and directly impact over 1 million women.

And she’s doing it not just in India, but across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S.—proving that gender lens innovation transcends borders.

Ankita: 

We started an accelerator three years ago.

We get around 5,000 applications from 20 plus countries. It will be an in-person thing, but it happened just after COVID, so it became global. Right? So we actually started getting applications from Turkey, from Indonesia, from different parts. Really interesting. But of course we get a lot of them from India and us.

They go through a 12 week program. So we take a hundred founders a year into the program. They go through 12 weeks of masterclasses, bootcamps, events, all that stuff. And then we choose the top 10 companies to invest in. Basically through that program, we kind of, you know, in terms of the applications and then of course, finally the founders that we take in every year, we're kind of really accelerating or mentoring around 300 founders, right, in that sense.

And so the idea is that that amount keeps growing. But my, of course, aim is that of course as we grow, we keep growing as a fund in the kind of, in the amount that we manage, we have a bigger AUM. But indirectly, directly through our investments, I would love to see that, you know, I have impacted or accelerated 1 million women.

#5 Be Loud. Be Clear. Be Your Own Champion.

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With a portfolio of 50+ companies, 5 unicorns, and multiple exits, Ankita has earned the right to be heard. But she’ll tell you—she still has to fight to be heard. The hardest lesson she had to learn? That passion doesn’t always persuade.

Ankita: 

I think it's all the learnings that I've had during fundraising. I think I've put myself out there a lot. And I think in the corporate or the business world, sometimes it's um, good to be more diplomatic, basically understand that things are different business like, 'cause I'm very passionate and I think sometimes my passion blurs in and then, you know, you people are expecting something else.

So I think I've had to learn that, you know, your passion won't always be aligned with, with the other person. So you have to learn to, um, kind of tell the story and kind of put yourself in different people's shoes and be okay with it. There's gonna be a lot more people saying no than yes, especially in investment.

Closing Remark:Legacy in Motion

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Ankita Vashistha is proof that investing in women isn’t a risk—it’s a return strategy. She’s rewriting the rules of who gets funded, who gets heard, and who gets to win. And if her success is any indication, the future of venture isn’t just more diverse—it’s more powerful because of it.

She’s also honoring her own legacy. While her father—Avinash Vashistha, former Chairman of Accenture India—helped shape India’s tech landscape, Ankita has carved her own path, running StrongHer Ventures independently while serving on the board of her family office. 

Ankita: 

Our legacy is that, you know, we've, my father especially has built out very successful tech businesses and then actually also led very big enterprises like Accenture.

But I think along the way, I always had my individuality and my voice. I never got into, you know, focusing into consulting or into like too much of a tech software, software part. I said, okay, let me do venture capital. And then even in venture capital, I found my unique voice in backing women entrepreneurs.

Right. I run a great job at. I guess taking our legacy for the business in terms of taking the technology for, in terms of investments that we do. I also sit on the board of our family office, which does much bigger road stage investments. We also do real estate and debt in all public markets, but as a board member, I manage that as an individual and as what I'm passionate about, the venture capital and looking at women entrepreneurship, so just uniquely my, and that's my voice.

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And the company she keeps? Her first fund drew the backing of some of India’s most iconic names: Mohandas Pai (former CFO of Infosys), Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Chairperson of Biocon), and other pioneering leaders who saw the same thing she did—that systems don’t just need to include women. They need to center them.

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I’m Sarah Chen-Spellings—and this was Billion Dollar Moves.

Until next time—keep making your version of billion dollar moves.