Inside WomHub’s creative space for female founders in Cape town

WomHub, a Cape Town primarily based female-founder innovation and coworking space, has formally opened its doorways to the general public. The space goals to offer a supportive group and workspace for ladies entrepreneurs, freelancers, and professionals. 

Located in the guts of Cape Town, WomHub presents a fantastically designed and totally outfitted coworking space with numerous facilities corresponding to high-speed web, 3D printing, and scanning providers, assembly rooms, and workplaces.

What units the space aside, in response to co-founder Naadiya Moosajee, is that it has been deliberately designed for ladies by ladies, so the space features a lactation lounge, a junior engineering hub the place members can have their children co-play whereas they co-work and a wellness lounge. The space additionally presents entry to a community of consultants, mentors, and traders, who can present steerage and help to ladies entrepreneurs.

“ For women who are breastfeeding, we’ve got a wellness area where women can do yoga, meditation and prayer. We’ve also got what we call the junior engineer hub. It’s basically a co-play space for kids that when you are working, your kids can co-play in the space and also learn about STEM and tech,” Moosajee tells TechCabal in an interview.

WomHub was based by engineers turned entrepreneurs and traders Naadiya Moosajee and Hema Vallabh, who recognised the challenges ladies face in the enterprise world. They wished to create a space the place ladies may join, collaborate, and convert. The founders consider that by offering a supportive and inclusive setting, ladies can obtain their full potential and make a significant affect in their respective fields.

“We are thrilled to open WomHub and provide a space where women can grow their businesses and hopefully make more money,” stated Moosajee. “Our mission is to empower women to pursue their passions and achieve success on their own terms.”

According to Moosaje, they plan to construct comparable services in Botswana and Kenya and ultimately, extra African nations.

More than only a coworking space

“What we have built is not a co-working space but a community. We are female-centric and want entrepreneurs to come into the space to not just work but grow,” stated WomHub co-founder Hema Vallabh.

One manner they’re setting WomHub aside is by  facilitating funding alternatives for female entrepreneurs in the group. 

“We started a venture capital fund, Five35 ventures, which is a $30 million venture capital fund investing in women in tech businesses across the African continent.”

Through entry to funding, WomHub goals to help ladies all alongside the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mining & Manufacturing) worth chain, from attracting extra ladies and ladies by their WomEng programmes to operating incubators and accelerators and investing in female entrepreneurs.

“I think this is so important because none of this means anything unless we can move the capital into the hands of women so that they can grow their businesses. And so, this is why my business partner and I have been so focused on raising the venture capital fund so that we can start to not only create the spaces for a woman, literally and figuratively, but give them the capital that they need to thrive,” added Moosajee.

According to Partech’s Africa 2022 Venture Capital report, female-founder start-ups raised 22% of all rounds in 2022, up 2% from 2021. Additionally, they accounted for $644 million, or 13%, of the entire fairness funding, down 3% from 2021.

There is a transparent have to bridge the gender hole in phrases of funding for tech startups on the continent and initiatives like WomHub, who provide help for ladies past simply mentorship however by really placing capital in their pockets, will play an important position in bridging the hole over the subsequent few years.