Closing the Gender Gap in Investing – How Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital firms can bridge the diversity divide

Diversity pays rich dividends – from access to top talent, to accelerated innovation to greater resilience. Recognizing the business imperatives of diversity, Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE/VC) firms have stepped up their efforts to close the gender gap over the past few years, but they are still behind the curve. This issue is becoming more urgent in Asian markets, where the number of companies with PE/VC funding has rise sharply and will continue to do so in the next several years.

With this context, BCG partnered with WinPE to launch “Closing the Gender Gap in Investing – how Indian PE/VC firms can bridge the diversity divide”. The report outlines the current state of gender diversity in the Private Equity and Venture Capital industry in India, the efficacy of different types of interventions that have been implemented by firms and persisting obstacles to improving the representation of women in the investing industry. It also advocates that to bridge the gender gap, PE/VC firms need to focus on the top of the funnel while recruiting for junior roles, explore hiring mid-to-senior women laterally from adjacent talent pools; encourage cultural acceptance of flexible work hours and hybrid working models, and account for these in transparent performance evaluation criteria; engineer access to mentors and female role models; get men more actively involved in championing gender diversity; and track the success of interventions on a regular basis.

The report features insights based on two surveys – the first survey covers 35+ PE/VC firms primarily based in India and the second covers over 80 women from the industry in both India and other parts of Asia. The report also includes learnings from interviews with 20+ PE/VC executives, including women across levels from Associates to Partners and heads of funds and men in leadership roles.