This has been a big few years for Women in Technology in Australia. The calls for increased diversity on boards are getting louder and last year we saw a slight increase in female representation – currently 25.4 percent, up from 23.5 percent in 2016. It is still pretty abysmal but, hey, it’s progress.  

To continue pushing for progress, on International Women’s Day in March this year, a number of major Australian VC firms decided to take a more hands-on approach in supporting female founders. The program is designed to match VCs with founders to offer targeted, helpful support.

While we, of course, still have a long way to go, there is much to rejoice about. Of the handful of female-founded tech companies, four have started 2018 with a bang, securing much-needed funding to continue their growth and take their businesses to the next level. Please join us in congratulating the following female-founded tech companies celebrating funding achievements already this year.

Brighte is a digital payments platform for home energy improvements. Brighte has already received two rounds of funding this year, totalling a whopping $38.5 million.

AgriDigital is an integrated commodity management solution for the global grains industry. In February they secured Series A funding of $5.5 million from Square Peg Capital.

FluroSat is an agtech company diagnosing crop performance using satellite and drone imagery. This year they received a $1.5 million grant to take their total capital raised to $43 million.

Ansarada is a global provider of next-generation virtual data rooms that enable faster, easier and safer business transactions. In their Series A funding round, Ansarada secured $24 million from Ellerston Capital.

Funding is, of course, quite an accomplishment, but it is not the only sign of success that should be applauded. In March, Business Insider reported on SBE Australia (a not-for-profit with the first female-only startup accelerator in Australia) announcing eight female-founders to be part of the next women-only Springboard Enterprises Australia accelerator program.

The successful participants were:

1. Anastasia Volkova – Flurosat
2. Barbara Sharp – Pax Republic
3. Bernadette Olivier – The Volte
4. Claire Morris – Prezzee
5. Georgie Drury – Springday
6. Kylie Legge – Place Score
7. Mel Gollan – RIP Global
8. Sabrina Bethunin – MadeComfy

Bravo to all the women in business, tech or otherwise, who have made accomplishments of all shapes and sizes! Entrepreneurship takes guts, and female entrepreneurship requires a whole other layer of commitment and grit to push ahead and beat down the bias.

Launch Recruitment are proud to support diversity, which you can explore further in our diversity program here . We are a female friendly IT recruitment agency in Sydney , Melbourne & Brisbane working with clients and candidates to take gender bias out of the hiring process .

Call us today on 1300 452 986 or connect with us via our contact page .