This article is a part of the Invest with Women: Strategies to Accelerate Progress series.

The number of female entrepreneurs is increasing around the world. In Singapore, a 2020 study states that about 60% of social enterprises are women-led and 40% are led by youth. New organizations today are increasingly being led by young women, but we have been unable to address the persistent challenges of access to capital, to networks, and to mentors and clients. Women, especially young women, continue to face challenges of being looked at as risky investments or experience difficulties establishing themselves in male-dominated rooms and finding the right mentors to support and guide their journey. 

Given the continued rise of entrepreneurship as both a viable career choice and a meaningful way to create large-scale change through employment and targeted products/services, it is critical to find the right resources, mechanisms, and individuals to support women entrepreneurs and enterprises. Not investing in their growth will impact both the pipeline of female leadership that needs to be groomed and the economic activity that these enterprises will stir.

Dalberg Advisors has worked with several clients such as the Singapore Tourism Board and Asian Development Bank to design and deliver different formats of innovation programs that are tailored to the outcomes of the organizations we work with. As part of this process, we work end-to-end by first understanding problem areas that need innovative solutions. We then design a program that will attract the top entrepreneurs/startups/social enterprises/NGOs/SMEs to participate in the program while also bringing together a custom mix of mentors, experts, and funders to provide additional support to these organizations as they charter their path to scale. In 2023, we worked with a cohort of youth entrepreneurs through the *SCAPE Creative Fellowship program. This cohort included a group of talented young women entrepreneurs with businesses ranging from making the music agency model more accessible to creating an entirely new approach to deliver the academic curriculum for youth adults living with disabilities in Singapore.

“During the *SCAPE Creative Fellowship program we found that women were often more open to inspiration coming from all sources. This came from a very deep-rooted sense of bringing the best product to all their stakeholders—the more diverse conversations they had, the better solution, business, and organization they believed they would create.”

Sreya Bhattacharya
Associate Partner, Dalberg Advisors

Contact: sreya.bhattacharya@dalberg.com 

Read more: https://www.scape.sg/cf6/