Diversity in VC: Ananda’s efforts officially recognized

Promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) within the VC and startup ecosystem has been one of the core pillars of Ananda Impact Ventures since its foundation. Now, Ananda was certified as a Level 2 firm under the Diversity VC Standard. This is a significant achievement for our firm, and we hope that it will inspire other players in the ecosystem to prioritize their own DEI agendas.

The Diversity VC Standard is an assessment and certification process that measures the internal and external DEI-related policies and programmes a fund has in place. Following a 1.5 hour assessment, in which each firm must provide evidence of various policies and programmes, funds are provided with a dashboard outlining their performance on an absolute and relative basis.

Funds that meet a set of predetermined criteria are eligible to receive either Level 1 or level 2 Certification under the Standard, which indicates both a commitment to DEI and position of leadership within the industry. The Standard was launched in September 2020 and ~60 funds have obtained certification since then.

In preparation for the assessment, Ananda Impact Ventures implemented a number of new programmes and policies, including partnerships with diverse communities to open up deal flow (announcement coming soon!) and fair internal recruiting practices (including removing bias in job ads and interviews). We have also committed to supporting and tracking DEI in our portfolio companies in the next 12 months.

Despite this achievement, we recognise that we still have a number of areas for improvement. This includes some areas that we as a leadership team may not be aware of. As such, we are encouraging those who have identified a growth area to contact us via info@ananda.vc.

You can find more information about the Diversity VC Standard on their website

We also highly recommend this article by Ananda Venture Partner Hedda Pahlson-Moller on DEI and impact