Helping financial hand for 150 female start-ups
ANEW funding stream for female-led business ventures has helped more than 150 entrepreneurs in the region since being launched last year.
Back Her Business is run by NatWest in partnership with Crowdfunder and aims to help and encourage more women to start up or fund their own businesses in the early stages.
The programme has backed 152 ventures in the Midlands and East of England in the year since its launch.
To take part, women must post their business idea, a video and a capital target on the Crowdfunder website.
NatWest will match fund up to 50 per cent of the initial crowdfunding target, up to a maximum of £5,000.
The bank has pledged £174,000 in the Midlands and East of England so far and said it hoped Back Her Business would go towards reducing the gender gap when it came to entrepreneurship.
Its aim is to support the creation of a further 400,000 female-led businesses by 2025. Back Her Business was launched in the wake of the Rose Review, a study into entrepreneurship among women led by NatWest’s chief executive Alison Rose at the request of the Government.
It concluded £250 billion could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men and that only one in three entrepreneurs were female.
Heather Waters, enterprise manager at NatWest, said: “A year on from the launch of the UK’s first female-only crowdfunding platform, we are successfully supporting entrepreneurs by providing them with industry-leading advice and mentorship. “We have already helped a number of women in the West Midlands drive forward their entrepreneurial ideas and business growth and we will continue to support entrepreneurs in the region and across the country going forward.”