Village Capital has partnered with Standard Chartered Bank to invest in the Bank’s Women in Tech program alumni with a focus on early-stage, impact-focused startups led by women.

As part of the deal, Village Capital has announced its inaugural investment in two women-led start-ups: Bena Care, a Kenyan start-up delivering affordable clinical and supportive care to patients with life-limiting illnesses in the comfort of own homes, and Mighty Finance, a Zambian fintech start-up with a compelling mission to provide access to capital for primarily women-led businesses. Benacare will receive USD 75,000, while Mighty Finance will receive USD 75,000, bringing the cumulative investment to $150,000.

Since its inception, Standard Chartered’s Women in Tech program has successfully completed six cohorts where 64 women led businesses have participated in the programme. Thirty-two of the businesses have been awarded grants totalling KES44 million.

The new partnership showcases Standard Chartered and Village Capital’s shared commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in impact investing.

By leveraging Village Capital’s extensive experience unlocking capital for impact-driven start-ups operating in underserved markets and Standard Chartered Bank’s dedication to empowering women entrepreneurs, this collaboration is poised to make a meaningful and lasting impact on the global entrepreneurial landscape.

“We’re extremely excited to partner with Standard Chartered Bank to support their vision to lift participation of women globally by driving more investment capital to impact-driven women founders,” said Heather Matranga, Vice President, Impact Investments, Village Capital.

Village Capital has been developing systems and processes for over a decade to improve equity in investment decision-making and ultimately unlock more opportunity and capital for women-founded and led ventures. Through this pilot facility, Village Capital intends to provide innovative and catalytic financing that truly meets the needs of women entrepreneurs across a range of business models and markets.

Bena Care offers skilled nursing, care giver services, training of family caregivers, physiotherapy services and free screening and health education though a network of healthcare workers, who through a mobile app are geo-mapped according to geography, and connected, to patients nearest to them.

According to Bena Care, Healthcare and hospitalization in Kenya is very expensive, bankrupting families both financially and emotionally. Fueled by the rise in prevalence of non-communicable diseases like cancers and cardiovascular diseases, the crisis has 1 Million Kenyans pushed below the poverty line each year. It’s therefore bridging this gap by delivering quality affordable and reliable clinical and supportive care at the patient’s own home. We achieve this by building a network of healthcare workers who are connected to patients in need of care nearest to them.

The platform empowers patients and their families to take care of themselves through training on basic caregiving skills as well as health education at 2USD per day and connects buyers of homecare equipment to sellers of used and affordable homecare equipment.

“We are excited to be able to partner with Village Capital to bolster our successful Women in Tech program, which has trained more than 70 women-led businesses by providing them with critical support to help scale their businesses to international standards,” said Joyce Kibe, Head, Corporate Affairs, Brand and Marketing, Standard Chartered.

“We believe by supporting more women in business, we are stimulating more robust and resilient economic activity, while providing support for inputs that are often neglected for start-up businesses,” said Ms. Kibe.