The Aurora Ventures program has been launched to support high-potential women founders in emerging markets, including the Philippines. This initiative is backed by global mobility and delivery platform inDrive and aims to address funding gaps faced by women-led startups.
The program's investment strategy is built on five years of insights from the Aurora Tech Award, which identified a persistent market inefficiency in valuing high-growth businesses led by women in MENA, Africa, and Latin America. The Aurora Ventures program seeks to capture this "mispricing" by investing $180,000-$250,000 at the pre-seed and seed stages.
The program utilizes the Aurora Tech Award's network to identify companies before their valuations fully reflect their performance, creating a repeatable model for generating alpha in emerging markets. The initiative aims to provide early-stage investment alongside access to networks and operational support to help accelerate the growth of innovative businesses.
According to Isabella Ghassemi-Smith, Head of Aurora Ventures, the program is built on the conviction that women founders are one of the most overlooked opportunities in venture capital today. She noted that exceptional women building rigorous businesses often reach institutional capital later and on worse terms than their performance justifies.
The 2026 pilot program focuses on building an initial portfolio and generating the track record necessary to transition into a formal GP/LP fund structure. By providing capital, network access, and operational guidance, Aurora Ventures seeks to accelerate portfolio companies toward subsequent funding rounds on more equitable terms.
Andries Smit, Chief Growth Businesses Officer of inDrive, explained that backing Aurora Ventures is not charity, but rather a strategic investment in the potential of women founders in emerging markets. He noted that inDrive was able to build its business against all odds, competing against better-funded incumbents, and sees the same potential in women founders.
The launch of Aurora Ventures follows the successful conclusion of the 2026 Aurora Tech Award in Santiago, Chile, where a record-breaking field of 3,400 applicants was narrowed down to the top 10 finalists, including women founders from countries such as Nigeria, Colombia, and Kenya.
