Germany-based enterprise software producer SAP yesterday unveiled the No Boundaries initiative, allocating 40% of the investable capital of its existing SAP.io Fund to startups led by women and minorities.
The $35m corporate venture capital fund was launched in 2017 to invest in early-stage companies and has made more than 15 investments to date. SAP expects to back and incubate at least 200 startups internationally through No Boundaries within the next five years.
No Boundaries will offer access to curated mentoring and exposure to the corporate’s technology, support for integration with SAP applications and opportunities to meet and collaborate with SAP clients.
The corporate’s accelerator SAP.io Foundries will also be scaled up with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship. The program has supported nearly 100 startups to date, approximately a third of which were founded or led by women or minority entrepreneurs.
SAP was spurred on to launch the initiative by figures published by deals database PitchBook that showed only 2.2% of venture capital went to women-only founded startups in 2017 and less than 13% went to those with at least one female co-founder.
The numbers were equally bad in Europe, SAP said in its statement citing data from investment firm Atomico. Only 2% of capital went to women-only founded startups and just 5% was invested in startups with at least one female co-founder.
Minority entrepreneurs face similar or even greater challenges in the US, according to SAP.
Deepak Krishnamurthy, executive vice-president and chief strategy officer at SAP, said: “SAP is committed to helping underrepresented entrepreneurs build successful startups and to levelling the playing field for women and minority founders in the startup ecosystem.
“We promise founders from all backgrounds equal opportunity in the technology ecosystem. We are proud to be the first company in the sector committed to driving inclusive entrepreneurship, combining investments and incubation with SAP.io No Boundaries.”
