WeVenture Helps Women Entrepreneurs Turn Ideas into Growing Businesses

Women entrepreneurs across Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan are building stronger businesses, finding new sources of finance and reaching customers beyond their home markets through WeVenture, a World Bank Group programme created to tackle some of the barriers that continue to limit women-led businesses across Europe and Central Asia.

Women lead fewer than a quarter of the region's micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, according to the World Bank, while established female entrepreneurs can still find it difficult to access financing, professional networks and opportunities that could help their companies expand. The economic impact reaches beyond individual businesses, with the World Bank estimating that global GDP could rise by $2.3 trillion if women-owned companies grew at the same rate as businesses owned by men.

More Than 150 Women Founders Selected for WeVenture

Funded by the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, known as WeFi, WeVenture attracted more than 470 applications, from which 153 high-potential founders were selected to participate across Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Entrepreneurs spent several months working with mentors and industry specialists on business strategies, investment readiness, networking and opportunities for expansion. The programme was designed around the reality that access to money alone does not necessarily create a successful growing business, particularly when founders lack connections with investors, potential partners and new markets.

For Armenian entrepreneur Mariam Baghdasaryan, founder of Purma Bakery outside Yerevan, discussions around investment changed how she viewed financing. She had previously seen approaching investors or banks for capital as intimidating, but the programme helped her understand fundraising as a business negotiation in which both the entrepreneur and investor are looking for opportunities.

Technology Opens New Opportunities in Kazakhstan

Kazakh entrepreneur Marina Boshel used the programme to rethink how technology could help her business grow. Her company connects women seeking flexible employment, including caregivers and others unable to work traditional full-time schedules, with beauty salons offering workstations for rent by the hour.

Much of that matching process had previously been handled manually, limiting the number of workers and salons the company could serve. Boshel developed an app-based platform that allows self-employed stylists to find and reserve available salon workstations while giving salon owners a way to generate income from unused space.

More than 100 women were connected with income opportunities during the platform's first month, demonstrating how a digital solution could allow the business to operate on a scale that its previous manual system could not support.

Georgian Founder Builds Cross-Border Business Network

In Georgia, sustainable packaging entrepreneur Salome Kareli used the connections developed through WeVenture to take her work beyond the domestic market. Kareli had already brought together more than 70 companies interested in circular economy solutions before joining the programme.

Mentorship and exchanges with entrepreneurs elsewhere in the region encouraged her to expand that network, leading to the creation of the Caucasian Circular Economy Alliance. The initiative has widened opportunities for collaboration and market access beyond Georgia while connecting businesses with a shared interest in more sustainable production and packaging.

Finance Alone Is Not Enough for Businesses to Grow

The experiences of founders taking part in WeVenture point to a wider challenge facing women-led companies: securing capital can make expansion possible, but businesses also need practical knowledge, technology, professional connections and access to customers if that investment is going to translate into sustainable growth.

The World Bank sees stronger support for women entrepreneurs as an economic opportunity for the wider region rather than simply a question of participation. When more founders can build scalable businesses, enter new markets and create employment, the benefits can reach workers, local communities and national economies.

For WeVenture participants, that approach has meant moving beyond conventional business training and giving founders practical ways to meet investors, learn from other entrepreneurs and rethink how their companies can grow across industries and national borders.