Portfolio Spotlight: Romoni
It’s widely known that the majority of venture money still goes to startups that have no women on their founding team. According to PitchBook’s latest report, in the US, while there was a 13% increase in VC funding to startups overall, the amount that went to female founders was less than in 2019 - only 2.2 percent of venture capital investment was directed to female-only founding teams (down from 2.6% in 2019) with just 12 percent invested into male and female founding teams.
At Accelerating Asia, so far we’re bucking the trend with 40 percent female-led ventures - 4 times the amount the average venture fund.
We’ve invested in female-only founding teams, male and female founding teams and teams delivering solutions for women. We’d like to keep growing this number and invest in more female founders, ladies please join the waitlist for our next cohort - we’re looking for you!
And, while we support our female founders and the great companies they are building every day of the year, for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we wanted to shine a light on just that - the products and solutions they are developing across the region, their current traction and the businesses these rockstar founders are building.
Starting with our portfolio company Romoni from Bangladesh.
About Romoni
Founders
Armin Zaman Khan, Tarique Ibne Haider and Abidur Rahman Mallik
Home market
Bangladesh
Industry
eCommerce and Beauty
Romoni is a 360-degree business-enabling platform that generates business leads, facilitates growth financing, and sources raw materials for MSME women service entrepreneurs who provide at-home beauty, wellness, and lifestyle services. One of Romoni’s major aims is to empower and support women in their entrepreneurial journey.
Products
Romoni offers three core products:
Beauty at home service: customers can use Romoni to access at-home beauty services provided by qualified beauticians. Romoni offers at-home beauty, wellness, spa, and lifestyle services. Currently we have over 50 services available on the platform. It includes everything, from day-to-day haircuts to bridal makeup. With a new team of in house beauticians, we can now ensure end-to-end control over service and product quality, and also increase our overall margin from 20% to 40-50%.
Salon products: We have launched our very own product line named “Romoni Salon Naturals” for salon and beauty professionals. We have started the product line with Romoni Glow Mask, and Romoni Anti-Acne Mask. We plan to launch 10 more products this year. 70% of our own product sales are generated by our service providers who act as product resellers.
Support for entrepreneurs: we support entrepreneurs to get trade licenses, setup their businesses, skills training and facilitate microloans (eLoan).
Traction
In the 2 years since started, Romoni has grown to be a a 360 platform for women entrepreneurs. Here’s a snapshot of their traction so far:
Has registered 600 women micro entrepreneurs
Generated over $450,000 total business for entrepreneurs
Hired 10 in-house salaried, full time beauticians to provide services to customers.
Selected for Accelerating Asia Cohort 2 and a $100k matching grant from Roots of Impact GMBH Frankfurt
Current Asks
The team at Romoni are currently raising $60,000 as part of the matching grant from Roots of Impact GMBH to close their current round which is almost full.