Namaste Brown Girl,
This week, we're feeling particularly bullish on brown girls.
Not just because the wins keep getting bigger (although... Walmart, Forbes, Bentley, anyone?). But because everywhere we looked this week, brown girls were backing each other, betting on each other, and building together.
We saw founders raising funds. Investors opening doors. Women learning to play poker like they're learning to invest. Dinner tables turning into meaningful connections. And a podcast reminding us that every iconic company starts with someone willing to believe before anyone else does.
Turns out betting on brown girls has a pretty incredible track record. 💅🏽
Welcome back to Brown Girls, Money Moves - your bi-weekly download on who's raising, building, scaling, investing, and making sure the next generation of South Asian women dreams a little bigger.
Here's what's inside:
🔥 Brown girls collecting awards, raising funds, and landing nationwide
🎙️ A new BGMM podcast episode on conviction before traction
🃏 Toronto Tech Week's first-ever Poker Power event
🍲 Brown girl dinner tables from NYC to Austin
☕️ Fresh gupshup for the group chat
Top up your iced chai. Let's get into it. 👀
→ spicy money moves
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This week’s brown girl wins are serving boardrooms, billion-dollar ambition, and proof that when one brown girl wins, she quietly shifts the entire industry with her. Here’s who’s making spicy money moves this week.
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🏆Another trophy for the shelf. Serial entrepreneur and Dragons' Den star Manjit Minhas took home Executive of the Year at the Ascend Canada Leadership Awards, where more than 600 leaders gathered to celebrate excellence across Canada's Pan-Asian business community. Manjit’s collecting wins faster than the rest of us collect loyalty points.
💰 Seed-stage investing has a familiar face. Seedcamp co-founder and Managing Partner Reshma Sohoni landed on the Forbes 2026 Midas Seed List for the fourth time, recognizing the world's top seed investors. Spotting billion-dollar founders before everyone else? Just another day at the office.
🚀 Funding women founders? Say less. Arāya Ventures and Sie Ventures announced the first close of their new £7.5M Arāya Sie Fund, backing women-led startups across AI, fintech, health tech, sustainability, and deep tech. More capital. More women building. We love to see it.
🎧 Europe's VC queen remains booked and busy. Accel partner Sonali De Rycker was inducted into the EUVC Hall of Fame, celebrating more than 25 years of backing some of Europe's most defining companies, including Spotify. Hall of Fame status officially unlocked.
🛒 From your feed to your local Walmart. Arrae just landed nationwide at Walmart, with products now available in 1,400+ stores across North America. Gut health just got a whole lot easier to add to your grocery cart.
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. 🤎
→ brown girls, money moves podcast
Season 1 of the Brown Girls, Money Moves podcast was honest, unfiltered, and unapologetically desi.
We sat down with Brown Girl Founders and the investors who bet on them. We unpacked what it really means to build, fundraise, and exit, all through a South Asian lens. 💅
And now… we’re back.
🌶️ Season 2 just launched with new guests, a new name, a new look - and the same spicy mission.
Episode 5 is for every brown girl who was told to dream smaller.
This week, we're joined by Zehra Naqvi, founder of Lore, and Marina Girgis, investor at Precursor. Hear from a founder who bet on herself long before anyone else could see the vision, and the investor who recognized it before the traction did.
Inside the episode:
☕ The wildly detailed memo that closed a pre-seed round with almost nothing to show
☕ Why 200,000 people joined a waitlist before Lore even had a name
☕ What VCs are actually looking for when there aren’t any metrics yet
☕ The resilience it takes to hear "no" without shrinking your vision
☕ How a shared obsession with fandoms helped spark the investment
Pour your chai and tune in to the full episode here.
→ bga in the wild - poker power
Toronto Tech Week 🫱🏽🫲🏾 Brown girls 🫱🏽🫲🏾 Poker. Safe to say this one was a winning hand. 🃏
We brought together South Asian women founders, investors, and C-suite leaders for Toronto's first-ever Poker Power experience. Some had never played before. Others came ready to bluff with confidence. Everyone left with a few new skills and new connections.
Turns out poker is a lot like investing. Know your odds. Trust your instincts. Don't let a bad hand stop you from making a great play.
The best part? Everything that happened after the cards were put away. The introductions. The "we should grab coffee." The "wait...we've been looking for someone exactly like you."
That's why we do this.
Huge thank you to First Avenue and BLG for helping us bring this to life, and to every brown girl who showed up ready to bet on herself (and maybe learn when to fold). Until the next hand. 🤎
→ brown girls, desi dinners
We put out the call to brown girls - and you filled our comments, our DMs, and our dinner tables. So we pulled up a few more chairs.
This spring, we gathered around the table with brown girlies across New York, San Francisco and Austin for an evening of good food, real connection, and conversations about business, investing, and spicy money moves.
Here's to creating more spaces where South Asian women can connect, champion each other, and build what's next. 🤎
Want an invite to a future dinner? Make sure you’re following us.
→gupshup
🚘 Brown girls are in the driver's seat. (Literally.)
🎬 Looks like your next rom-com just found its brown leading lady.
🍛 Toronto’s hottest new reservation.
→spread the love
💼Take your seat at the table. See what we’re up to in 2026.
💰 Your new home for brown girls building wealth, writing checks, and changing who gets funded and who gets to fund. Join our Substack.
🙋🏾♀️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
If you missed our poll last time, let us know now what you’re interested in!