With 9 years of experience across Ed-tech, Food-tech, Beauty-tech, Media-tech, and Healthcare tech, Deeksha wears many hats as an entrepreneur, consultant, investor, collaborator. She is committed to enabling growth in the startup ecosystem through diversity and sustainability as the driving force behind her work.

Encubay is a diversity-focused startup network that is creating a connected and inclusive ecosystem for female founders. Encubay Angel Network , one of the initiatives under Encubay’s banner, aims to unlock the huge potential of funds that rest with women & men who are keen to invest in diverse founders.

Founded in 2020, Encubay was launched in collaboration with GreenHouse Capital Africa that aims at bringing up the percentage of women in the startup ecosystem from the current 14% which is dismal.

In her journey with Encubay, Deeksha also realized that there was a lack of funding that was making its way into the hands of early-stage startups founded by women. It was hypothesized that part of the reason was a lack of female angel investors in India. After some women reached out and expressed their interest in investing in diverse startups, the idea for the Encubay Angel Network was born.

The angel network aims to create a collective of women who want to invest in women-led startups, thereby increasing the funding that is being provided to diverse startups. The network was founded in partnership with Deeksha’s co-founder at Encubay – Eashita Maheshwary, and three other accomplished women investors and founders – Ankita Vashistha, Jayaroopa Jeyabarathi and Anisha Patnaik.

They facilitated their first angel investment in Ready Set Jet – a beauty and social-impact lead company founded by Shalini Vadhera. The investment was done from some of the top women in the country who were partners at the largest VC funds. The Network is also preparing to announce their second investment and they aim to also provide access to smart capital to any startup that they invest in through the networks that were built at Encubay.

In this episode, Deeksha talks about the investing strategy & process of Encubay, cross border pollination, collaboration, and co-investments in the region, gender lens investing in SEA, among other things.