50,000 users, 3 awards and huge impact: HerVenture’s a triumph!

Our award-winning mobile business skills app HerVenture has been changing women’s lives since 2018. 50,000 of them, to be exact.

We don’t wish to pat ourselves on the back, but we have reason to celebrate our award-winning app HerVenture! The app is one of the Foundation’s three flagship programmes, offering women entrepreneurs essential business skills training and support on the go. Since first launching in 2018, the app has now supported over 50,000 women entrepreneurs across VietnamIndonesiaKenyaSouth AfricaNigeria and Guyana.

Reaching 50,000 users is a significant milestone and a huge testament to our app’s success, but it’s the impact that HerVenture has had for those 50,000 women that really tells the story of how important it is. And this impact has certainly been recognised, with HerVenture winning not one but three awards in the past six months!

In October 2021, we were delighted to receive the Digital Innovation of the Year Award for HerVenture at the UK’s Third Sector Awards. The award recognised the innovative and incredibly valuable support that the app has offered women entrepreneurs during the pandemic, supporting them to protect their businesses through the crisis—and therefore their livelihoods. The Third Sector Award judges declared HerVenture is “solving a clear problem with a clever solution – it is a great concept, delivered to those that need it most.”

Close up of woman entrepreneur's hand holding the HerVenture app.

Then, in December, we were excited to win Mobile App of the Year in the Social Impact category at the first Annual Mobile Summit and Awards in Kenya. The awards celebrated the best mobile applications in Kenya in 2021, and winners were chosen on user voting. HerVenture has supported over 5,000 women entrepreneurs in Kenya to grow and strengthen their businesses thanks to the support of our partners DHL Express and Sinapis, and we are extremely proud of everything we have achieved together. Plus, we’re aiming to reach 3,500 more women entrepreneurs in Kenya together this year through HerVenture and our other flagship programmes, Road to Growth and Mentoring Women in Business. Watch this space!

Finally, also in December, we were thrilled to learn that HerVenture had won an award in Guyana, just three months after the app was launched in the country. Alongside our partner ActionINVEST Caribbean Inc., the app won the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association’s President Award for the introduction of new technology. We are so proud that the app’s huge potential and impact in Guyana is being recognised, and delighted that after just six months, HerVenture is already being used by 5,000 Guyanese women entrepreneurs. To put this into perspective, this means that around one in fifty Guyanese women is a HerVenture user.

HerVenture is free for women to download. It works by generating a personalised learning journey for each entrepreneur based on their individual business needs. Learning content is provided in bite-sized, easily digestible formats such as swipe-able cards and quizzes, and can be used offline. Users can find and connect with each other, as well as learn about local business events. We see fantastic outcomes from the app, with 94% of users applying the learnings to their businesses, and a majority going on to increase customers, staff, sales and revenue as a result.

HerVenture was first developed thanks to the support of our collaborator Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™ Initiative. Together, we launched HerVenture in Vietnam in 2018 in collaboration with WISE Vietnam (Women’s Initiative for Startups and Entrepreneurship), and we are delighted with the long-term impact the app has had in the country. “Since 2012, we have been working with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women because we understand that companies play a central role in helping to achieve gender equality and to improve the well-being and lives of women,” said Angela Baker, Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Director, Government Affairs at Qualcomm Incorporated, “this programme is an example of how expanding access to mobile technologies is allowing women entrepreneurs flexibility and valuable knowledge as they start and grow their businesses.”

Of course, none of these successes would be possible without the amazing women entrepreneurs in low and middle countries all over the world who use HerVenture to start, grow and sustain their micro, small and medium-sized businesses successfully. Kenyan HerVenture user Wangari Mwaura puts it best: “Before we were running blind, so the app is a light in the dark. It helps us to know what to do, and if you’re stuck you can access the tool to address it.”

Find out more about HerVenture

Our award winning mobile business skills app has reached more than 50,000 women so far.

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HerVenture user in Nigeria