Issue #102 -Grit and Growth

Starting a business takes courage, and today, women are stepping up like never before. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, women are now 80% as likely as men to launch a startup, and one in every three established businesses is now run by a woman!

This is exciting! However, despite this progress, women-led companies still face challenges when it comes to securing investment funding.

Take Europe, for example. In 2023, women-founded startups raised only 1.6% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups. In the US, the number was only slightly better at 2.1%. Even though women are creating businesses at a similar rate to men, they aren’t getting nearly the same amount of financial support.

A major factor behind this is the perception of a “boys’ club” in the investment world. Research shows that in Europe, only 15.2% of decision-makers in investment firms are women and 17.4% in the US. This lack of representation affects who gets funded.

​​In the VC space, there’s something called “homophily”—the tendency for people to stick with those who are similar to them. Investors often look for startups that resemble past successes, which have mostly been led by men or diverse teams. 

The numbers paint a clear picture: Women-led startups in Europe and the US received only about 2% of venture capital funding in 2023. However, in India, the reality is quite different, and I will mention that in my next week’s issue.

There is some hope, though. Around 70% of venture capital investors are now tracking the number of female-founded companies in their investment pipelines. This shows that awareness is growing, and with it, hopefully, more opportunities for women entrepreneurs. 

I’m working on a piece about the funding challenges female founders face in FemTech and women’s health. If you have thoughts to share, drop me a line.

Ahammune Biosciences has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by early-stage venture fund, pi Ventures. The fundraise also saw participation from Capital2B, Colossa Ventures, Bipin Agarwal, Unicornus Maximus LLP, and

• Vicebio, a London, UK-based biopharmaceutical company developing novel vaccines against life-threatening respiratory viral infections, raised $100M in Series B funding.
• Surgar, a Clermont-Ferrand, France-based company developing augmented reality solutions for minimally invasive surgery, raised €11M in Series A funding.
• C2N, a St. Louis, MO-based diagnostics company developing Precivity blood tests, raised $7.025M in funding.
• GPDQ, a London, UK-based primary healthcare provider, received an investment of £1.2M from IW Capital.
• F2G, a Manchester, UK-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, raised $100M in funding.
• Epitopea, a Cambridge, UK- and Montreal, Canada-based transatlantic cancer immunotherapeutics company, received a £500K Grant from Innovate UK.

• Four out of five pregnant women will become deficient in an essential nutrient, iron, by their third trimester, a new study finds.The researchers and other experts are now advocating that iron levels be routinely checked during a pregnancy for the safety of a mother and her baby.
• Food sold in shrink wrap, on cardboard trays or in paper containers might contain any of nearly 200 chemicals linked to breast cancer, a new study warns.Commonly used food packaging materials contain 189 chemicals that can potentially cause breast cancer, researchers reported Sept. 24 in the journal Frontiers in Toxicology.
• Incidence of 17 types of cancer is rising among Generation X and millennials, finds a study from the American Cancer Society published in the journal The Lancet Public Health. Researchers used data from 23.6 million patients diagnosed with 34 types of cancer and from 7.3 million cancer deaths, for adults aged 25–84 years between 2000 and 2019
• Having a husband or boyfriend with adult ADHD can harm a woman’s mental stability, a new study suggests.About 3 in 5 women (59%) with male partners with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) had symptoms of depression, a rate on par with caregivers who help loved ones deal with health problems like autism, heart rhythm disorders, Alzheimer’s disease and kidney failure, researchers report.
• If a woman is already in a “prediabetic” state in her teen or college years, her odds for a serious complication of pregnancy later in life rises, new research shows.
• Bacteria that causes gum disease can also raise a person’s risk of head and neck cancers, a new study says. More than a dozen bacterial species have been linked to a collective 50% increased risk of head and neck cancer, researchers found.
• “Body roundness” could be a better measure than BMI at predicting how excess weight might affect a person’s heart health, a new study finds.
• A new gene therapy approved earlier this year can serve as a sustainable single-dose treatment for people with hemophilia B, newly published clinical trial data shows.
• Only 1 in every 4 U.S. adults struggling with schizophrenia receive “minimally adequate treatment,” new data shows. Many of these patients also struggle with other mental health issues, such as substance abuse or depression, and they are further challenged by social and economic hardship, according to the new report.
• Nearly half of all cancer deaths and four in 10 cancer cases in adults aged 30 years and older could be attributed to lifestyle choices, finds a US study published in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
• Over 40 percent of U.S. adults are now obese, with rates roughly the same for men and women, new government data shows. Obesity rates fluctuated with age and fell as levels of education increased, said the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Psilocybin could help people suffering from a mental health problem that can lead to eating disorders, a new study suggests. Psilocybin, the active chemical in “magic” mushrooms, significantly reduced symptoms in people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), researchers reported Sept. 24 in the journal Psychedelics.
• Pregnant women covered by Medicaid are less likely to get an ultrasound exam that can diagnose heart defects in a fetus, a new study finds.
• Surrogate moms have a higher risk of pregnancy complications than other pregnant women, a new study finds.About 8% of surrogate mothers developed a severe complication like high blood pressure or serious bleeding during delivery, Canadian researchers report.
• Kids born during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have no higher risk of autism, even if they were exposed to COVID in the womb, a new study finds.

• Dr Geetha Manjunath, founder of Niramai Health Analytix has been elected as a Fellow of the Prestigious Indian National Academy of Engineering
• Allo Health has partnered with Girl Up India to spread awareness about its free STI Risk Assessment tool which has been developed in-house 
• Aditi Mittal, founder of Newmi Care was featured in Women Entrepreneurs Review (WER) as part of its list of 4 Must-know Women-Led Indian Startups in the Fertility Care Sector
• Momly is hosting a Coffee Meetup – Meet your mom tribe on 28th September at Fo’Sho Lucknow

• Digital health platform Ovia Health by Labcorp is aiming to plug a gap for postpartum support in the US via a new programme. It has launched the Postpartum Experience – a 12-month programme designed to help women manage multiple aspects of the postpartum period through personalised recovery modes, symptom tracking and alerts, and mental health support.
• Roche announced the launch of the cobas Respiratory flex test, the first to use Roche’s novel and proprietary TAGS (Temperature-Activated Generation of Signal) technology. TAGS technology, developed by Roche scientists, uses multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, combined with colour, temperature and data processing, to identify as many as 15 pathogens in a single PCR test.
• Narayana Health, unveiled first of its kind robotic cardiac centre of excellence. This centre recently became the fastest in the country and the second fastest in the world to successfully perform 100 robotic-assisted cardiac surgeries, by completing it in 147 days.
• Aileron Therapeutics, Inc. (Aileron), a biopharmaceutical company advancing a novel pipeline of first-in-class medicines to address significant unmet medical needs in orphan pulmonary and fibrosis indications, announced the completion of enrollment in Cohort 2 of the ongoing phase 1b clinical trial of LTI-03 in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) patients.
• Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Thu Dau Mot University (TDMU). It paves the way for the establishment of a FABA chapter in Vietnam, marking the organization’s commitment to expanding its presence and influence in South East Asia.

• The Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme is making significant effort to address the growing burden of kidney disease in India by enhancing the availability and affordability of crucial dialysis services.
• The Drugs Consultative Committee (DCC), the advisory committee formed by the Central government to advise the Central and state governments on matters that require uniform implementation of drug laws across the country, has recommended amendment of Drugs Rules to the effect that no antimicrobials should be sold by the traders to the non-pharmaceutical industries who are not holding requisite licence.

📳 – Quick Reads: 

• Could Antidepressants Give Memory a Boost? Antidepressants have the potential to improve memory and thinking skills, a new study suggests.
• Diabetes Treatment Might Ease Gum Disease, Too. Diabetes can worsen the state of your gums, but a new study suggests that diabetes medications may undo some of that damage.

See you next Friday, friends 👋
Navneet

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