🍂 Namaste, Brown Girl.
Fall might be cooling down the weather, but in our world? The momentum is only heating up.
Welcome back to Brown Girls, Money Moves—your monthly roundup of the wins, wisdom, and gupshup fueling the Brown girl founder and investor ecosystem.
Here’s a taste of what’s inside this issue 👇🏽
✨ From Diwali ice cream collabs to $2.7M funding rounds—Brown girl wins stacked high last month.
👩🏽⚕️ Young brown girl founders made headlines.
🎙️ The chai keeps spilling on Brown Girls, Bold Moves (Ep. 2 is here!).
💸 Angel investing myths busted + new ways to get started.
🤎 IRL BGA gatherings.
Grab your pumpkin spiced chai and let’s dive in.🧋🔥
spicy money moves
👑
🍁 Fall might be all about slowing down… but Brown girls? We only speed up. From funding rounds to Diwali collabs, from daytime TV cameos to TIME covers—our community is stacking wins and rewriting the headlines.
Here’s what’s hot this month:
👑
💸 Congrats to Ex-OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan who just bagged $2.7M for VyLit — an AI platform that empowers emerging creators with the tools to monetize content and build community on their own terms.
🍦 Pooja Bavishi’s Malai Ice Cream partnered with Palak Patel (Aka The Chutney Life) to drop the sweetest win of the season - a limited edition Diwali collab that’s basically festive nostalgia in a pint.
🔒 Cheers to 17-year old Brown Girl Founder Tejasvi Manoj, who’s proving age is just a number. Named Time’s 2025 Kid of the Year, she launched Shield Seniors, a service protecting the elderly from digital crime.
👑 The queen of matchmaking met the queen of daytime TV. Brown girl founder Nandini Mullaji of Sitch hit the Drew Barrymore Show to talk about finding love and the future of dating apps.
💊 Arrae x Pamela Anderson = the iconic collab we didn’t know we needed. They partnered to launch MB-1 45+, a supplement line redefining wellness after 45.
Check out all of this month’s brown girl wins here.
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
💪🏽 In September, we celebrated National Women’s Health & Fitness Day, by recognizing the brown girl founders building the future of health.
At Brown Girl Angels, our mission has always been clear: back the women who are rewriting the playbook. Nowhere is that more urgent than in women’s health and femtech, where for too long, our pain was dismissed, our bodies understudied, and our solutions underfunded.
🙋🏾♀️ These 5 founders are changing that. From integrative medicine to AI-powered life sciences, from patient-first healthcare models to groundbreaking biotech, they’re proving that women’s health isn’t a side hustle—it’s the main stage.
Here’s to building systems that actually see us, serve us, and strengthen us. Learn more about them here. ✨
[Sponsored]
Meet Preeti Kaur, Founder of The Rani Glow ✨
The Rani Glow is your one-stop shop for South Asian beauty. This e-commerce platform curates skincare, hair care, body care, and cosmetics exclusively from South Asian brands across the diaspora.
By celebrating both tradition and innovation, Preeti and her team are making high-quality South Asian beauty more accessible — while fostering a sense of culture and community with every product.
🛍️ Explore The Rani Glow. Psst…your glow-up just got more affordable. Use code BGA25 for an exclusive 25% off—just for the BGA community.
angel investing 101
There are plenty of myths about angel investing. Let’s break down one of the most popular:
❌ MYTH: “Angel angel investing is like gambling”
While both involve risk, angel investing is not the financial world’s lottery.
🎲 Unlike gambling—where the house always wins—smart investors use strategy, research, and community to manage risk and make informed decisions.
But let’s not sugarcoat the high-risk, high-reward nature of investing in early stage startups.
The difference? 🤔
➡️ At a casino, the odds are stacked against you.
➡️ In angel investing, you can actually take steps to mitigate your risk:
💡 Investing isn’t a game of chance—it’s about strategy, research and smart decisions.
Curious to debunk more angel investing myths? Sign up for our first angel investing course of the season (learn more below).
brown girls, bold moves podcast
Brown girl things overheard in episode 1 of the Brown Girls, Bold Moves podcast.
🫓 “Validate your product by throwing rotis at the wall.”
👩🏽💼 “Who is this woman who kind of looks like me?”
🍛 “That’s who we are in our DNA as a culture. There’s always enough food at the table.”
🎙️ Only on BGBM could “throwing rotis at the wall” be legit startup advice. This is what makes our podcast different - business and investing advice, but from a South Asian female lens.
🔥 Episode 1 and 2 are live now. Grab your chai, press play, and join the conversation.
🎧 Listen here
📺 Watch here:
BGA in the wild
🙋🏾♀️ Toronto Brown Girls, Desi Dinner🍴
Toronto, you showed up.
Our very first Brown Girls, Desi Dinner in Toronto reminded us exactly why we started this series in the first place.
It was everything we imagined, and more. Held at Ambica Jain’s Adrak, we shut the restaurant down after three hours of nonstop laughter, stories, and connection.
What made it special?
🤎 Women across every stage of their careers—business, corporate, and professional—sharing space and conversation.
🤎 Stories of growing up South Asian—across Kenya, Pakistan, India—mixed with Brown auntie tales, parental expectations, and the realities of our everyday lives.
🤎 A table full of strangers who bravely showed up solo and ready to share and connect.
The best part? That “I’ve known you forever” feeling that only comes when we drop the small talk and get real.
✨ The response was bigger than expected, which tells us one thing: there’s a real hunger for spaces like this. We’re already counting down to the next one in October. Is your name on the waitlist yet? It’s not too late - sign up here.
🗽New York desi women, we’re coming for you this fall. 💌 Want in? Make sure you’re on the waitlist so you don’t miss out.
Our friend Zehra is a former consumer VC and now founder of Lore. Check out her ultra popular newsletter here:
an evening of entrepreneurship, design and dialogue
A few weeks ago, we partnered with TD Women in Enterprise to host a night in Toronto dedicated to entrepreneurs at the intersection of business and design.
The evening featured:
💡 A powerhouse panel by TD
💎 A hands-on jewelry workshop with Dean Davidson
🎤 Keynotes from Karen Kelly (sales trainer + speaker) and fashion brand Arpino Moda
🤎 Plus meeting and connecting with some of Toronto’s boldest female business owners
And of course—we brought the Brown girl magic. ✨ We were proud to invite a group of incredible brown girl business owners from Toronto, including:
At BGA, we love creating spaces to gather, amplify, and celebrate women entrepreneurs.
bhar’s thoughts
🎙️ The Road to Building Brown Girls, Bold Moves
What started as a scribble in a notebook…is now a podcast that almost didn’t happen.
For me, launching Brown Girls, Bold Moves is a dream brought to life - a dream with many starts, stops rewrites, late nights, and many lessons learned along the way.
✨This podcast is proof that being bold is rarely linear and straightforward. Boldness isn’t perfect—it’s persistence. And now that the first episode is live, we can finally say: the messy middle was worth it.
☕ From spilled chai to sleepless nights—peek behind the scenes of how we built the Brown Girls, Bold Moves podcast.
GUPSHUP
Because no brown girl gathering ends without a little gupshup. Here’s what’s coming up and what you don’t want to miss:
💸 Thinking about angel investing but don’t know where to start? We got you. We’re hosting our first angel investing course of the season - and in line with BGA’s mission to democratize access to knowledge, we’re opening it up beyond just BGA members. This is your chance to learn the fundamentals, connect with other South Asian women, and take your first step into the world of angel investing.
💸 Thinking about angel investing but don’t know where to start? We got you. We’re hosting our first angel investing course of the season - and in line with BGA’s mission to democratize access to knowledge, we’re opening it up beyond just BGA members. This is your chance to learn the fundamentals, connect with other South Asian women, and take your first step into the world of angel investing.
🗓️ Save the date: October 17th at noon for a half-day angel investing course. Learn more here.
Psst, use our exclusive community Discount Code: BGA2025
📣 Calling all Toronto brown girl besties!
We’re thrilled to share that BGA is an official Community Partner for the Immigrants in Tech Summit 2025 hosted by Scale Without Borders. 🎉
📍 The ROM | October 20, 2025
This summit is the go-to event for immigrant tech talent—spotlighting immigrant-led innovation across industries, from Pre-Seed to Series B.
✨ Bonus: our very own Bhargavi Varma will be a judge as founders pitch live on stage to investors, partners, and media.
Are you currently raising? 👉🏽 Apply here to pitch.
🎟️ Secure your ticket with our community discount code: BGA → Grab yours here.
call to action
📣 SPREAD THE LOVE
Have you followed Brown Girl Angels on TikTok yet? Now is a good time to hit the follow button because we’re giving away a slew of brown girl founded products.
We’re celebrating brown girl-owned brands with a special giveaway. From skincare to chai liqueur to little luxuries, this bag is packed with love.
Check out our tiktok post for our ✨Brown Girl Giveaway✨
📩Got a brown girl founder or product you love? Submit their info
🙋🏾♀️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