Aurora Ventures launches with backing from inDrive, a global mobility and delivery platform scaled to unicorn status across the same emerging markets the program is investing in, for its 2026 pilot year. Nigeria is one of the project’s priority markets.
The launch follows the successful conclusion of the 2026 Aurora Tech Award in Santiago, Chile, where a Nigerian, Adeola Ayoola-Famasi, was named among the top 10 finalists from a record-breaking field of 3,400 applicants.
Other women founders that make up the 2026 Aurora Tech Award top 10 finalists include: Adriana Gonzalez-Tizo (Panama), Angela Acosta-Morado (Colombia), Catalina Isaza- Innmetec (Colombia), Estefania Abello- Muta (Colombia), Maria Kawas- DomestikCo (Chile), Mariana Zuliani-OncoAI (Brazil), Mercedes Bidart- Quipu (Colombia), Patricia Florencia- Pilou (Mexico), and Penny Musengi- Pesira Technologies (Kenya).
Aurora Ventures, an early-stage investment program, is designed to leverage one of the world’s largest pipelines of underserved female talent. It is built on a proprietary sourcing advantage derived from five years of Aurora Tech Award data.
With applications exploding by nearly 30 times since 2021, the Award noticed a persistent market inefficiency, fuelled by high-traction, high-growth businesses led by women in MENA, Africa, and Latin America, which are consistently undervalued and overlooked by traditional venture capital.
A new Aurora research study involving 900+ founders across 127 countries found that women founders face systemic competence scepticism and higher traction standards.
The program, Aurora Ventures, aims to capture the “mispricing” faced by women founders by investing $180k–$250k at the pre-seed and seed stages.
The program also utilises the Aurora Tech Award’s network to identify companies before their valuations fully reflect their performance, creating a repeatable model for generating alpha in emerging markets.
Speaking on the initiative, Isabella Ghassemi-Smith, head of Aurora Ventures, described the launch of Aurora Ventures as a disciplined investment program built on the conviction that women founders are one of the most overlooked opportunities in venture capital today.
“Over the past five years, we’ve seen a repeating pattern: exceptional women building rigorous businesses but reaching institutional capital later and on worse terms than their performance justifies,” says Ghassemi-Smith.
She stated that the success stories of the top 10 finalists underscore the calibre of startups the initiative intends to back.
Also speaking, Andries Smit, chief growth businesses officer, inDrive, explained that,
“We built inDrive against all odds, competing against better-funded incumbents. We see the same thing playing out with women founders in emerging markets today. Backing Aurora Ventures is not charity; it is the same bet we made on ourselves.”
The 2026 pilot program focuses on building an initial portfolio and generating the track record necessary to transition into a formal GP/LP fund structure.
By providing capital, network access, and operational guidance, Aurora Ventures seeks to accelerate portfolio companies toward subsequent funding rounds on more equitable terms.
