Copenhagen-based startup Female Invest acquires Danish fintech Gaia Investments, a sustainable investment platform with a mission to create a new financial system that aligns people, planet, and profit. This was triggered by the demand for trading from the startup’s users. They believe the demand speaks for itself in terms of engaging more women in the world of investing. With this acquisition, Gaia will no longer provide its services via its app as of December 1st but the fintech’s Chief Technology Officer Mads Sverre Willumsen will be joining Danish edtech.
Danish startup, Female Invest, is an EdTech platform and community which, through approachable subscription-based e-learning, empowers millennial and Gen Z women by increasing their understanding of personal finance and investing.
Female Invest aims to close the gender investment gap by providing a space in which women can acquire the skills necessary to control their own capital and obtain financial independence. What’s more, according to analysis by Warwick Business School, women who do take the plunge outperform men when it comes to investment returns, making the need for a company run by women, for women, that approaches finance in a fun and authentic way, all the more pertinent.
Female Invest co-founder, Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, explains the rationale underpinning the platform: “Internationally, women are falling further behind when it comes to finance. They are earning less, saving less and then – with what money they have – they are investing less. Our job at Female Invest is to close that gap as quickly and helpfully as possible.”
Co-founder, Camilla Falkenberg, outlines the need to reinvent the paradigm of how young women experience financial advice: “When it comes to money-saving insights, the internet is filled with sites which advise young women on how to save money on beauty, clothes, food and going out. Yet, when it comes to making money, there is almost nothing on helping women make substantial investments. Female Invest fills this gap.”
In December 2020, Female Invest closed a $1.6 million in a funding round led by Danish state investment fund, Vækstfonden, alongside five prominent investors including Jeppe Christiansen, CEO and co-owner of Maj Invest, Shailendra Patel, co-founder of Saxo Bank and Mia Wagner, co-founder of Nordic Female Founders and an investor on Danish Dragons’ Den.
