Photo courtesy Pialy Aditya

Photo courtesy Pialy Aditya

A couple of years ago, Pialy Aditya (MBA 2005) got an unexpected inquiry from a venture capital firm: Would she be interested in being a partner? Though she wasn’t looking for a new job, she was intrigued by the idea. As an entrepreneur, an angel investor, and a senior advisor at Republic, an online investment platform, Aditya certainly had the necessary expertise to identify and foster promising founders. But she had to wonder, “Why me? Why now?” She recalls asking a mentor: “Is it because I’m a woman? Is it because I’m a minority?”

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Aditya was acutely aware of the inequalities that plague the venture capital world, including the less than 3 percent of VC money that goes to all-women founding teams (a number that is even smaller for women of color) and the dearth of women and all people of color in the ranks of investors. She also knew that some firms were seeking to diversify their partnerships without addressing underlying structural problems. “Partner” did not always mean check-writing abilities or a voice on the investment committee. It did not always mean the ability to make change. As Aditya articulated her concerns about the state of entrepreneurship and investing and the role she might be able to play remedying that from inside a VC firm, her mentor interjected: “Why not take your own path?”

Aditya had long been committed to promoting equality in all aspects of business. While working in the fashion and retail industry—as the director of Global Strategy at Donna Karan (a division of LVMH), the general manager of Shop Your Way and the founder of Mintbox, a flash sale and loyalty startup—she helped to organize the World Fashion Forum, which brought together the public and private sectors to discuss safety, education, and opportunity in a sector where the majority of workers are women.

Indeed, Aditya was already disrupting the traditional investment model with her work at Republic. The company, which launched in 2016, offers investment opportunities to both accredited and non-accredited investors—92 percent of the country—something that had not been legal until that year. Using Republic’s website or app, anyone with $10 can invest in a highly vetted startup. Moreover, women founders and founders of color too often at a disadvantage in the VC world now had a new source of potential investment.

“We want to democratize investment,” Aditya says of Republic’s mission. “This is about leveling the playing field. From the founders’ perspective, it means greater access to capital, and from the investors’ perspective, it offers the opportunity for wealth creation.” Today, she serves as chief strategy officer for the firm, which has connected more than 1 million investors with some 300 companies, raising in excess of $250 million.

But Aditya didn’t stop there, reflecting her belief that, “if you want to see diversity in founders, you need to see diversity in funders.” Spurred by her mentor’s advice, she cofounded her own early-stage investment fund, the WOCstar Fund. The fund focuses on innovative tech startups founded by women of color and inclusive teams. For Aditya, it is both an essential corrective to the exclusion women of color have faced in the VC world and a smart investment. “Women and diverse-led companies are highly profitable, yet undercapitalized,” she says. “A perfect arbitrage investment scenario.” Among the seven companies in the WOCstar portfolio are Zero, a plastic-free, direct-to-consumer online grocer and distribution platform for food manufacturers, founded by Zuleyka Strasner, who is a trans Black and Latinx woman, and Hemster, which connects users to on-demand services provided by an Uber-style network of tailors from marginalized communities, founded by Allison Lee, who is Korean-American.

It’s not just about funding women and people of color, Aditya says. It’s an investment in the future. “Creating the opportunity for investors and undercapitalized entrepreneurs to come together will generate wealth, job opportunities and healthy, thriving economies and communities.”

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