Since 2000, maternal mortality has declined by nearly 40 per cent. Girls are more likely to complete school than at any point in history. And femtech – technology designed for women’s health and wellbeing – is one of the fastest-growing sectors in frontier innovation, with the global market projected to reach US$97 billion by 2030. Progress is real. But it is uneven, and the gaps that remain are significant. Globally, when women become pregnant, among every 100,000 successful births, 197 mothers die from complications. Some 244 million more men than women use the internet, locking women out of the digital economy. More than half of girls and young women have experienced online harassment.
Funding to support girls and women’s health and wellbeing, which can also improve outcomes for children and communities at scale, falls far short of demand. Pick any metric, the answer is the same. Globally, female-only founding teams secured just 2.3 per cent of all venture capital in 2024. In Southeast Asia, the figure drops to 2.1 per cent. Worldwide, gender equality programmes receive less than 1 per cent of all official development assistance.
In the United States – the most comprehensively tracked market – organizations serving women and girls receive 1.9 per cent of total philanthropic giving, a share that has barely shifted in a decade and that researchers note is likely to be even lower globally. The World Economic Forum’s Women’s Health Investment Outlook 2026 found that women’s health captures only 6 per cent of private healthcare investment. Different channels, different geographies, one pattern.
We can change this. That is why we partnered with UNICEF Office of Innovation and other like-minded partners to launch Femtech Ventures: a five-year catalytic investment platform backing locally designed, frontier technology solutions for girls, women and children across Asia and Africa that boost health, protection and economic opportunity.
By identifying and backing founders building scalable solutions for girls, women and children in emerging economies, Temasek Foundation’s role is to direct catalytic funding towards gaps not filled by the public and private sectors – in this case, the shortage of early-stage funding for femtech innovators in Southeast Asia and other emerging markets.
UNICEF brings a long track record of investing in frontier technology and programme infrastructure to mentor founders and connect them with resources for deployment. Together, we are committed to using philanthropy to drive smarter, more impactful investments in women’s health.
The first annual Femtech Ventures call for applications received over 1,100 submissions from entrepreneurs in 85 countries, proving the breadth and depth of femtech innovation from emerging markets led by local entrepreneurs. In Indonesia, Bahasa Ibu employs women to build and validate spoken language datasets across 700 local languages. This creates jobs while reducing the bias in AI systems that often exclude minority voices – if a language is excluded from the AI training data, its speakers are effectively shut out of the systems being built around them. Bahasa Ibu is an example of how one solution can address multiple gaps at once: improving AI inclusivity while creating economic opportunity for women.
Bahasa Ibu is one of Femtech Ventures’ 10 emerging market startups, half of them in Asia. Each company receives up to US$100,000 in equity-free funding and technical assistance to test, strengthen and scale their pioneering early-stage solutions into sustainable, investable models.
All the startups in the portfolio leverage frontier tech – AI, blockchain and data science – to accelerate results and more than half are woman-led. In Asia,
The local entrepreneurs behind these solutions do not just understand the problems they are solving, they bring firsthand knowledge of the communities they serve and the risks those communities face.
Feminine health data and the geolocation of users are among the most sensitive data and, unfortunately, increasingly monetised. The tech industry continues to show gaps in consent design, data protection and user safeguards – leaving sensitive data vulnerable. This is not a fringe concern, but a structural risk, and one that philanthropy has an obligation to confront.
Femtech Ventures was built with safety-by-design as a condition for investment and a standard applied from the outset. Founders are supported to interrogate their own threat models: who has access to this data? What are the risks in a shared device environment? What is the legal exposure in the markets this solution operates in? The result is solutions that are people-centred and built with the highest standards of data protection and consent in mind. They should not inadvertently create new vulnerabilities.
Uli – which detects online abuse in real time – is a direct expression of that principle. So is the programme’s deliberately expansive definition of femtech, which encompasses safety and economic autonomy alongside health. For the women these founders serve, those are not separate questions. At this month’s Philanthropy Asia Summit 2026 in Singapore, Temasek Foundation and UNICEF will be joined by femtech startup founders as they co-host a session on value-driven partnership and investment in femtech.
Founders in emerging economies building solutions that address real threats – with safety-by-design – and centre the needs of girls and women, are already breaking the pattern of underinvestment.
Together, we will explore the growing role of femtech in closing the gender health gap and how public, private and philanthropic sectors can deploy their funding to drive meaningful change alongside financial returns. We are committed to supporting a principled femtech ecosystem – built equitably and safely and led by women in emerging economies.
Grounded in women’s local knowledge of their specific social needs, the Femtech Ventures startups are evidence that the opportunities to invest are out there. Investing in these and other frontier technologies for girls, women and children is a social imperative, but it is also an opportunity to build better futures for everyone.
Usha Viswanathen joined Temasek Foundation’s Health & Well-being team in 2024, bringing extensive global experience in nutrition, innovation, partnerships, and health strategy
