The Data City has partnered with fellow Leeds-based firm Panintelligence, a provider of embedded SaaS analytics, to produce and implement an Inclusive Growth Dashboard on behalf of a women-led task force created by The Cabinet Office.
The data indicates that in Leeds, investment in women-led businesses – where more than half of the directors associated with the business are female – receive significantly less investment than male-led ones. Only five per cent of funding rounds in Leeds go to female-led companies according to the dashboard.
The high-growth enterprise task force has been set up to increase the number of women-led, high-growth businesses, focusing on regions outside of London.
Zandra Moore, CEO and co-founder of Leeds-based software specialists Panintelligence, is part of the task force, alongside 10 other female entrepreneurs and experienced business leaders, chaired by Anne Boden MBE, founder and former CEO of Starling Bank.
The overall aim of the task force is to influence and engage with high-growth investors and the wider business community, inspiring and raising the aspirations of the next generation of female entrepreneurs. It will also work with organisations across the UK to support the government’s overall target of increasing the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030 (equivalent to nearly 600,000 more female entrepreneurs), focusing on driving change in growth capital.
The Inclusive Growth Dashboard, which sees The Data City and Panintelligence working together for the first time, will initially showcase inclusive growth data for Leeds city region with opportunities to roll out in other local authority regions at a later date.
Using The Data City’s real-time economic growth data, the dashboard, produced by Panintelligence, harnesses UK company information, ONS data, funding and investment measures (from Dealroom), growth indicators and other open-source data.
Highlighting access to finance and funding for women-led businesses, the dashboard showcases the inequality in current investment opportunities across the UK and how change can be driven in this area in the future.
The women-led high-growth enterprise task force will help raise the profile of high-growth entrepreneurship, identify the main barriers to accessing high-growth capital, and suggest areas to stimulate regional opportunities based on robust data and engagement.
Alex Craven, CEO of The Data City, said: “This is an exciting growth project which brings two of Leeds’ most prominent tech businesses together for the first time to help boost the profile and success of some of the UK’s major female entrepreneurs and inspire future growth as well as talent. The regional dashboard has been published to highlight data for Leeds, but has wider applications at a local and national level, and will enable local authorities to track inclusive growth and drive change in investment in diverse businesses.”
A webinar featuring Moore and Craven is taking place on September 21. The panel-based event will provide insight into the findings of the work, highlighting the data underpinning the lack of investment in female-fronted businesses and discussions around the opportunities for growth and future success.
Moore said: “I am pleased to be involved in the Cabinet Office’s task force on this important initiative but also to spearhead the technology which will help redress the balance. We are shining the spotlight on the inequality in current investment opportunities in the UK and demonstrating through accurate growth data how we can drive and implement future change in this area.
“It is not acceptable that businesses and individuals are denied opportunities to expand and develop simply because they are founded and fronted by female entrepreneurs. Research shows that female-led businesses are more likely to succeed and make for better investment opportunities. Still, when it comes to the real value of funding, less than one per cent of overall funding is allocated to female-led businesses.”
