Ratu Nusa Fund Aims at Indonesian Startups Led by Women

Gobi Partners and Ozora Yatrapaktaja collaborated to launch the “Ratu Nusa Fund” managed fund of $10 million or around 143.6 billion Rupiah. They target startups from seed to pre-series A led by women in Indonesia.

In an official statement, Ratu Nusa Fund will focus on investment in Indonesian startups in the vertical health tech, e-commerce/social commerce, proptech, future of work/education, fintech, and enterprise/SME tech.

The focus is on empowering businesses that can improve the quality of life of women in Indonesia. It also targets startups in developing cities in Surabaya, Bali, Denpasar, Nusantara and Medan which have not been exposed to their potential by investors.

Gobi Partners Co-founder Thomas G. Tsao said, “Indonesia is the right market to increase investment that focuses on women’s empowerment, considering that currently there are around 30 million female entrepreneurs taking advantage of the fast-growing startup ecosystem.

“So far, women entrepreneurs have only received a small portion of the investments that have been disbursed by VCs, mainly because there is a deep-rooted gender bias. This condition leaves a lot of untapped potential. We hope the Ratu Nusa Fund can overcome this gap,” he said.

Optimism Can Drive Progress in Indonesia

Ozora’s Founding Partner Margaret Srijaya added, “We can’t wait to find startups with the next gold potential in Indonesia. He also believes that this managed fund can boost the scale of its impact in Indonesia and other markets in the Asia Pacific region.

“There are many startups that have not and have not received support from VCs in encouraging women entrepreneurs and impactful businesses that serve the 133 million female population in Indonesia,” she said.

For information, Gobi Partners targets investment in the early to growth stages with a focus on developing and underserved countries.

To date, Gobi has 15 funds under management from 13 countries, invested in 310 startups in the world, with several portfolios such as Crowdo, Deliveree, and DOOgether.

Meanwhile, Ozora Yatrapaktaja is a VC with local expertise in Indonesia, networks, and a global community in developing women’s business empowerment globally.

Margaret is known to be the Founder of the online community Womenpreneurs.id which was founded in 2018 and Head of VC at BPP HIPMI Indonesia.

Invest In Women’s Empowerment

The empowerment of MSMEs and women entrepreneurs has received a lot of attention in Indonesia. Not a few startups are developing digital products or services to serve women entrepreneurs in Indonesia.

For example, Amartha disbursed loans to women entrepreneurs with a ‘joint responsibility’ model. There is also a new startup Amaan which positions itself as a platform beyond financial services to serve women entrepreneurs.

However, this alone is not enough considering that there are still many female-led startups and those serving female entrepreneurs who have not been exposed to investor networks, both domestic and foreign.

If you look at the potential, data from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs records that more than 50% of the total 64.19 million MSMEs are run by women.

Meanwhile, the Kauffman Foundation report states that female-led private technology companies have proven to be able to use capital/investment more efficiently, achieve a 35% higher Return on Investment (ROI) and, if supported by VCs, can earn 12% higher income. than male-led startups.

On our radar, there is also a similar managed fund partnership for women, namely YCAB Ventures with Moonshot Ventures through the Indonesia Women Empowerment Fund (IWEF). They have a mission to make an impact on empowering women in the Indonesian startup industry.

YCAB Ventures’ Head of Impact Investments, Adelle Odelia Tanuri, said that IWEF could help them reach more MSMEs by investing in startups. That way, it can encourage a wider impact.