[ad_1]
Sheikha Bodour Bint Sultan Al Qasimi presents Partnership Award to Crescent Enterprises Senior Vice President Ghada Abdelkader for the CE-Ventures platform during the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival.
gulf today staff reporter
According to Ghada Abdelkader, senior vice president of Crescent Enterprises, one of the world’s most diverse companies headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, female investors steer economic sustainability by supporting female entrepreneurs. playing a role.
Ghada Abdelkader, who attended the 6th Annual Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival on behalf of CE-Ventures, Crescent Enterprises’ corporate venture capital platform, said progress was being made to address the gender gap in the investment sector and that more emphasis should be placed on said we need to work on it. She focuses on improving diversity and inclusion practices as more companies clearly understand their business case. But the pace of change is still slow,” she said.
“Major changes are generally difficult to make when years of thinking and strategies need to be completely refreshed. For example, we frequently evaluate global funds that boast integrated gender diversity strategies. But if you look at the team, you can see that the majority of decision makers are men,” Abdelkader added.
The discussion highlighted the unique opportunities that both women entrepreneurs and investors present in economic sustainability. However, women entrepreneurs remain underfunded, with only 2% of her funding allocated to women in the United States and 1% in the Middle East and North Africa region. Similarly, the proportion of female investors in the US is also low, with 8-10% of GPs being women, and only 2% of founders being women, and even lower in the MENA region.
However, we do not invest in all women-led businesses out of the blue. Instead, it’s important to remove unconscious bias from the investment decision-making process. The MENA region is more receptive due to the relatively emergent nature of the ecosystem. “I am more optimistic about the outlook for the MENA region due to the relatively early VC ecosystem and the fact that women investors played a key role in the beginning of this ecosystem. While advancing the gender equity agenda, I believe non-GLI investors need to create a more conducive and welcoming environment for women-led startups and founders,” said Ghada. says.
She also emphasized that investments are valued based on the merits of the opportunity and the challenges it addresses, but that benefits and objectives can co-exist.
“At CE-Ventures, we aim to invest in different sectors with a focus on technology-enabled solutions. Over the past five years, we have invested in foodtech, fintech and edutech as examples. Our investment philosophy focuses on companies that solve real problems, scale globally, and use technology as a competitive advantage to solve specific problems.”
Ghada Abdelkader commented in the session “Women Investors and Their Impact on the Industry”, joined by Sheikha Al Mheiri, Chairman of Fortitude Holding, and other speakers including Olga Fleming, investor and serial entrepreneur, Founder Heather Henyon moderated. Partner, Mindshift Capital.
The panel will be part of the 6th Annual Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival 2022 in Scherah, with the theme “Where we Belong”, at the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park, Sharjah Entrepreneurship Centre, Scherer. As a founding partner and supporter of Sheraa, Crescent Enterprises is committed to empowering entrepreneurs and developing an environment for innovation to thrive. Hatch & Boost Ventures, a joint venture of CE-Creates, showcased its latest portfolio business during the festival. World of Farming: his homegrown AgriTech company creating smart farming solutions to aid and support food security challenges. BreakBread is a digital platform that aims to connect food enthusiasts, hosts and talented cooks through home cooking.
Meanwhile, business heavyweights recently gathered on the Tech Stage of the 6th Sharjah Entrepreneurial Festival (SEF) 2022 to share their invaluable know-how and personal experiences with a packed audience to enhance their entrepreneurial capacity. I was eager to
“In any economy in the world, SMEs contribute almost 90% of GDP. Why? Because 60% of the workforce comes from these small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This is why we believe SMEs are an important sector in any economy,” said Shaker, mSME Officer at the Emirates Development Bank. Zainal said at the annual celebration.
[ad_2]
Source link
