[Funding alert] Professional women network leap.club raises $340K in a Pre-Seed round

leap.club, a Gurugram-based community-led professional network for women, on Thursday announced that it has raised $340,000 in its Pre-Seed round. The round saw participation from some of angels and funds including Whiteboard Capital (Sandeep Tandon’s VC fund), FirstCheque, Artha India Ventures, Sweta Rau (Founder, White Ventures), Amrish Rau (CEO Pinelabs, Founder Citrus Pay), Deepak Abbot (Former SVP, Paytm), and Harpreet Singh Grover (Co-founder, Co-Cubes) among others. 

The founders Ragini Das and Anand Sinha in a joint statement said,

“We are a community-led professional network with a simple mission — more women in leadership positions. We are creating a private network that focuses on professional development and future goals and not on what we have done in the past. We are excited to shape the future of work by making specialised tools available to established and future business leaders with an aim to close the leadership gap.”

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leap.club said its paid membership is designed for women to strengthen their journey into senior leadership. With 4,000+ women on the waitlist. The startup opened memberships in May 2020 and has already onboarded founding members in Delhi NCR from a variety of companies and industries like Uber, TikTok, Dunzo, EY, NDTV, Group M, Tinder, Invest India, Google along with founders of startups like Josh Talks, Fittr.

It claims that members get access to exclusive benefits like exec coaching, focus on mental wellness, tools to upskill, a stronger relevant network, and more. 

“Economic data suggests a clear positive correlation between higher participation of women in the workforce and a country’s development and at Whiteboard, we believe entrepreneurial initiatives like leap.club are necessary to improve the growth possibilities of women in the workplace,” added Sandeep Tandon, Managing Partner at Whiteboard Capital. 

Anand Sinha till recently was the Global Head for Zomato Gold, Zomato’s dining out subscription program. He was an early employee in Zomato first joining them in 2011 and has had two stints in food tech unicorn where he held multiple leadership positions.

He is also the co-founder of The Robin Hood Army and PressPlay TV, a media-tech startup that had earlier raised funds from Sequoia Capital.

Ragini Das has spent six years at Zomato and was the head of international expansion for Zomato Gold.