The founders of Bubble Tea Club, Jenny Le and Pam Yip, have teamed up with consultants from BlueRock to secure $400,000 in growth funding.
Female entrepreneurs are finding it difficult to break through the glass ceiling and expand into new markets, with the lack of access to government funding one of the bottlenecks.
For women-founded tech companies, it has been revealed that just 0.7 percent of funding was given in the last 12 months, with 3.7 per cent of start-up funding going to women-founded companies between 2017 and 2021.
Jenny and Pam are an example of how challenging it can be to receive government funding. Dealing with misconceptions and stereotypes placed upon female founders, both from the industry and potential employees, as well as accessing funding were just a few of the barriers both Jenny and Pam had to overcome.
How did they do it? The businesswomen reached out to a professional advisory firm, BlueRock, who helped them successfully secure funding through the Boosting Female Founders Program.
“The Boosting Female Program helps female entrepreneurs overcome the disadvantages faced in gaining access to finance and support to grow their startups through targeted support on a co-contribution basis. It provides targeted support to female founders of startups to scale,” explained Millicent Brearley, a Manager at BlueRock.
The Australian government has reserved a total of $52.2 million in grant funding for the program. Since its launch, the Boosting Female Founders program has received more than 2,500 plus expressions of interests and has helped close to 40 recipients.
When seeking funding, Pam and Jenny consistently fielded questions on their long-term commitment to the business, how they plan to balance future children, and how they see themselves juggling family and caregiving activities – all factors that have been cited as a risk by investors.
With the funding received through the Boosting Female Founders program, Bubble Tea Club will now seek to realise its growth ambitions, including international expansion.
Bubble Tea Club is a DIY bubble tea kit brand, with the aim of bringing bubble (or “boba”) tea away from the stores and into the home. The online brand has quickly gained popularity, and has since its inception in April 2020 distributed more than 2 million servings of DIY bubble tea.
Among the initiatives that will be rolled out in the coming period include: investments into digital advertising and social media channels, ramping up the size of the internal team, and setting up distribution partners in foreign markets to ensure a successful launch.
“We’re delighted to have helped Jenny and Pam successfully secure funding,” said Brearley.