Namaste, Brown Girl. ✨
Cozy season is here, but let’s be real, our community doesn’t do hibernation. While everyone else is winding down, we’re doubling down — on deals, dreams and impact.
From Whole Foods shelves to zero-emission trucks, from hydroponic meat labs to the Victoria’s Secret runway: brown women are out here rewriting the script (and writing the cheques).
Welcome back to Brown Girls, Money Moves — your bi-weekly dispatch of the deals, drops, and bold moves fueling the brown girl founder and investor ecosystem.
Here’s what’s simmering this month 👇🏽
💥 Founders turning food waste into fortune
💅🏽 Brown models walking global runways
💰 Brown girls raising, investing, and scaling with spice
🎧 A Brown Girls, Bold Moves podcast episode on value-aligned investing
🥘 IRL desi dinners for us, by us
Get cozy, pour the chai, and let’s toast to another month of brown girl brilliance. ☕
spicy money moves
👑
While everyone else is slowing down, brown girls are turning up the heat. From funding rounds to nationwide collabs, from the runway to the boardroom — our community is stacking wins and rewriting the headlines. Here’s what’s hot this month:
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💰 Brown girls writing cheques: Sheena Jindal’s Sugar Free Capital raised a $32M inaugural fund to back early-stage MIT founders.
🧃 Power couple Radhi Devlukia and Jay Shetty’s sparkling adaptogenic drink brand, Juni, just hit Whole Foods shelves across the U.S.
🤖 Aarthi Ramamurthy joins Wingify’s board — bringing 15+ years of product leadership to guide them into their AI era.
🌶️ The collab we didn’t know we needed: The Chutney Life x Williams Sonoma dropped a line of sauces, starters, rubs, and chutneys inspired by her family recipes.
📚 Storytime gets a desi glow-up: Bol and Sol Books released The Desi Dot Book — your baby’s new favorite board book.
💅🏽 Runway royalty: Punjabi model Neelam Kaur Gill returned to the VS runway, while Malayali model Luna Yohannan walked the halftime show and made Vogue’s list of 10 Breakout Models of Spring 2026.
We love celebrating brown girl wins ✨ Got a recent win, milestone, or shoutout you want us to know about? 📩 Submit your win by filling out this form and let the BGA community hype you up. 🤎
the brown girl founder’s club
The planet called — and these brown girl founders answered. Meet the South Asian women turning waste into wealth, climate guilt into innovation, and sustainability into scalable businesses. 🌍 ⚡♻️
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Niya Gupta | Fork & Good: What if you could grow pork like you grow basil? That’s exactly what Niya and her co-founder at Fork & Good set out to do in 2018 when they developed the world’s first patented “hydroponic system” to grow real meat without using animals. Today, Fork & Good is scaling toward their vision of a scalable, sustainable, humane and cost-effective future for meat.
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Sanchali Pal | Commons: Tired of the greenwashing? Commons is here to cut through the noise. Commons helps you make more sustainable choices with your wallet—while holding brands accountable along the way. Tens of thousands of users are already using the app to track their spending, lower their emissions, and drive real change. In 2023 alone, the Commons community cut emissions by 19%—the equivalent of taking 80% of U.S. cars off the road.
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Insiya Jafferjee | Shellworks: Plastic-free, planet-forward, and actually functional? That’s the future the team at Shellworks is building. They’re behind Vivomer—a breakthrough material that looks like plastic but IS 100% natural, non-toxic, and designed to disappear when you’re done with it—no landfills, no microplastics, no lies. With over 900,000 plastic packaging units already replaced, Shellworks isn’t just dreaming of a cleaner world—they’re designing it.
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Murvah Iqbal | Hived: Hived IS the UK’s first 100% zero-emission parcel delivery network. What started with Murvah and her co-founder biking deliveries THEMSELVES has now scaled to 250+ employees, five of the top 10 UK e-comm giants as clients, and an impressive backing. All powered by data, electric vehicles, and a vision for a cleaner, smarter future in shipping.
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Nivatha Balendra | Dispersa: Dispersa is a Canadian cleantech startup turning food waste into the world’s first fully waste-derived biosurfactants. (Translation: they’re replacing toxic, petroleum-based chemicals with sustainable ingredients you can actually feel good about). Dispersa’s flagship product, PuraSurf, is already making waves. From lab breakthrough to commercial scale in just two years, Dispersa is cleaning up the chemical industry—literally.
Want to hear more about what Nivatha’s building? Check out the latest episode of Brown Girls, Bold Moves (Learn more below).
BGA in the wild
Immigrant Tech Summit
A few weeks ago, Brown Girl Angels was an official Community Partner of the Immigrants in Tech Summit 2025 hosted by Scale Without Borders. As champions of Canadian tech, innovation, and diverse communities, we were proud to support an event that puts immigrant-led innovation center stage.
This summit is the go-to gathering for immigrant tech talent—spotlighting founders across industries from Pre-Seed to Series B.
Our very own Bhargavi Varma was a judge as founders pitched live on stage to investors, partners, and media.
brown girls, bold moves podcast
🎙️ If you believe business is about more than the bottom line, or if you need fresh faith that purpose-driven founders can commercialize real innovation—this is your new playbook.
In this truly inspiring episode of Brown Girls, Bold Moves, Bhargavi sits down with founder Nivatha Balendra (Dispersa) and Investor Olga Cruz (BDC) to talk about resilience, science-driven innovation, and the power of value-aligned investing. Nivatha shares the remarkable journey of launching Dispersa, a cleantech startup which converts food waste into eco-friendly biosurfactants. Olga reflects on her path as an Investor and the importance of intuition, seva, and supporting women founders.
Together, they unpack what it takes to commercialize sustainability solutions, navigate fundraising, and stay grounded through meditation, community, and resilience.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here
👉🏽 Watch the full episode here.
GUPSHUP
🙋🏾♀️ Brown Girls, Desi Dinners🍴
The response to our Brown Girls, Desi Dinners series has been unreal. Clearly, there’s a hunger for spaces where ambitious South Asian women can slow down, show up, and speak freely.
Our first few dinners in Toronto, SF and New York were magic. Brown women from all walks of life coming together to connect, dream, share stories and laugh.
The best part? We’re just getting started. More cities, more stories, more seats at the table - coming your way this fall. Make sure you’re on the waitlist. ✨
🗓️ Upcoming Dinners
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🙋🏾♀️We love celebrating brown girl founders who are building bold, brilliant, and inspiring companies. Got something in the works or looking to raise soon? We’d love to hear from you.
🫱🏽🫲🏾If you’re looking to get your brand, product or service in front of a community of South Asian women who love to uplift, invest, and support each other—this is your sign. Reach out to learn more about our sponsored content opportunities
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