The venture capital company TA Ventures, which invests in innovative Internet projects in Ukraine, the USA and Europe, founder and Managing Director of which is Victoria Tigipko, plans to open a fund to support startups, co-founders of which are women.
“Next year we will create a small fund for women in startups, with the condition that at least one woman be a co-founder of a startup,” she said at a press conference on the first anniversary of the Ukrainian Startup Fund in Kyiv on Thursday.
Tigipko noted that if a woman is included in the top management of a startup, the team earns 2.5 times more. Citing Baker McKenzie, she said that if there are three more women in the management of a company than its competitors, the company earns 3% more.
According to Forbes, TA Ventures has 128 investments worth more than $60 million. The fund’s largest investment is $3.85 million.
The volume of venture capital attracted by Ukrainian companies and startups in 2018 amounted to $336.9 million, which is 30.3% more than in 2017, according to a review of the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA).
According to the document prepared in partnership with Deloitte, the number of transactions increased by 29% and reached 115.
UVCA notes that venture capital funds focused on transactions on the seed stage, the number of which increased to 21 from 11, and the average check for such transactions with the announced investment volumes rose by almost 90%, to $918,000.
The survey also states that the number of transactions and the volume of investments in 2018 grew during the pre-seed, seed and growth development stages.
According to UVCA, the most active investments are received by companies from the sectors that are least exposed to political risks – online services, software, hardware, marketplace, and e-commerce.
According to the document, in 2018 there were seven M&A transactions for a total of more than $25 million (this figure was first included in the report), as well as seven angel investments in startups worth $900,000. Last year’s largest transactions in the market were Gitlab with $100 million and BitFury with $80 million.
The Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA) was created to disseminate information about investment opportunities in Ukraine and multi-vector support of investors.
