The gender gap in online marketplace

While progress has been made to invest more into tech workspaces created by cis-women, trans, and non-binary founders, female-identifying led startups lack funding compared to their male-led counterparts.

In 2021,  87% of angel funding was invested into startups solely composed of male founders. And gender inequality isn't limited to funding, women across different startup sectors reported poorer experiences with investors and 63% felt a lack of equal opportunities compared to those afforded to male founders.

Overall, there's a lack of marketplace presence of female-identifying founders with only 7% of global startups are run by them and 8% of rounds are invested into their teams. Luckily, funding amounts have kept up proportionally over the years with sustainable growth as women-led startups have received 10% of total marketplace funding since 2016.

According to the World Economic Forum, women have consistently lower access to the internet, and once online, women are 30 to 50% less likely to use the internet for increased income. This difference is especially apparent in developing countries. 

However, E-commerce and marketplaces present an opportunity for women to gain economic independence in these regions. For example, the IFC reported a potential $280B increase in the e-commerce market by diminishing the gender earnings gap in south-east Asia alone, which represents 18% of total current Asian e-commerce space. 

Additionally, marketplaces have found success by catering to female-identifying customers. Large platforms like Etsy and Pinterest have 90 and 450 million monthly active users with a customer base composed of 81% and 77% women, respectively. More specifically, marketplaces focused on women have been founded mainly in categories such as: fintechs with Female Invest, Rallie, Jefa and FinMarie, recruitment platforms with The Mom Project, Freelancing Gems and Hire Her and service platforms as TaskHer.

On Dealroom.co, we've mapped more than 3200+ marketplaces founded by women. 👈 Explore them today!

Select deals from last week:

🇨🇦 Facedrive, the Ontario based startup that offers socially responsible services to local communities, raised $4.7M in a private placement VC round. The company offers a range of services from ride sharing and food delivery to an apparel marketplace.

🇺🇸 Fanatics, a Florida-based online sports retailer, has raised $1.5B at a $27B valuation including the company's card trading segment, NFT platform and sports betting vertical. Adding to previous investors of the likes of Softbank and Alibaba, the new round was led by BlackRock, MSD Capital and Fidelity.

🇺🇸 Legal.io, the legal recruitment marketplace based in San Francisco, raised a $11.6M Series A round led by Tiger Global. In 2021, the startup saw a 4.5x YOY revenue growth and now wants to use the funding to expand its platform of over 7,500 professionals to improve hiring matches between clients.

🇮🇳 Just Dogs India, a pet supply marketplace, has raised $7M from Sixth Sense Ventures. This is the first round for the decade old startup that caters to 150,000 customers and operates in 42 cities across India - the funds will be used to expand an online platform for customers.

Other notable marketplace deals from the last week: 

🇺🇸 Exeest, a NY-based entertainment marketplace, raised a $3.1M seed round.

🇬🇧 Perlego, the online student book marketplace based in London, is rumored to have raised $40M.

🇹🇭 Pomelo, a Thailand-based fashion platform, has raised $600k following its $34M round in December of last year.

Read up on all the latest marketplaces deals in Dealroom.co

Exits:

🇦🇹 Pharmosan acquired  Vamida, the Vienna based only pharmacy platform, for an undisclosed amount.

🇨🇦🇦🇷 Mobi724 has acquired Avenida+, the Argentinian B2B whitelable marketplace for an initial $4M.

Read up on all the latest marketplaces exits in Dealroom.co

Tip of the week

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Ivan Draganov

Senior Innovation Analyst
Dealroom

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