Village Capital & Standard Chartered Backs Imera & Giving Credit with $25K Grants Each

• Village Capital and Standard Chartered US collaborated to back women-owned tech startups with the US Women in Tech Accelerator program
• Giving Credit and Imera were picked by their peers as best projects in the program.
• The initiative is a culmination of an overall movement to empower women entrepreneurs in the technology industry throughout the United States

Village Capital and Standard Chartered US have jointly stated that two women-led startups, Imera and Giving Credit, each received $25,000 in grant capital as part of the US Women in Tech Accelerator program. The program was created to finance women entrepreneurs who are developing solutions to enhance economic mobility and expand access to vital services to women, families, and low-income communities in the United States.

The program focused on a diverse set of ten women-founded businesses and gave them real-world mentorship, strategic guidance, and business-building tools to expand their businesses. One uniqueness of the accelerator was its peer selection process, whereby participating founders evaluated one another's businesses based on eight investment factors crafted by Village Capital. This process, found to be more democratic and generous than conventional venture capital procedures, allowed the group to democratically make decisions about which companies they invested in, based on vision, potential impact, and growth.

Ashley Sherwin, co-founder of Giving Credit, described the experience as highlighting the benefits of learning to think like an investor and the connections made with other entrepreneurs. She was thankful for the award, stating that it was an honor to be chosen by such a skilled group of peers.

Giving Credit, in Malden, Massachusetts, is a company that enables safe and transparent lending and borrowing between friends and family, providing a groundbreaking alternative to providing credit access for groups commonly excluded from the mainstream financial markets. Imera, with headquarters in New York City, is an AI-driven digital platform designed to assist more than 40 million immigrants in the U.S. It offers individualized advice and streamlined entry into important services like housing, banking, legal assistance, and healthcare, and is therefore a one-stop shop for immigrants to get about in a foreign country.

Standard Chartered US and Americas CEO Mandy DeFilippo congratulated the winners and noted the role of inclusion as a force for innovation and sustainable growth. She noted that the collaboration with Village Capital is consistent with Standard Chartered's wider purpose of closing capital gaps and fostering inclusive economic opportunity through initiatives such as the Futuremakers program.

The Women in Tech Accelerator is among a number of programs under Futuremakers by Standard Chartered, the bank's global program for advancing economic inclusion among disadvantaged youth—particularly women and individuals with disabilities. In the Americas region alone, Futuremakers has empowered more than 2,500 people through employability, entrepreneurship, and skills training.