In 2024, office equality has turn into unfairly politicised. Well-known CEOs from Elon Musk to Lululemon founder Chip Wilson are waging battle on DEI, whereas different smaller employers are scrapping initiatives, arguing that such initiatives might be divisive quite than inclusive.
However let’s not neglect that among the most essential employment rights, together with gender pay hole reporting and shared parental go away, are in fact DEI initiatives. The truth is, something that’s designed to deal with discrimination at work and in society is an instance of DEI development.
Our Startups 100 DEI Award celebrates the corporations and founders who’re championing progress. Learn on to find the shortlist, and which startup we named our winner.
WINNER – Black Seed VC
It’s a basic supply of funding for brand spanking new companies. But solely 0.24% of enterprise capital went to Black founders prior to now decade. Right here to deal with this racial funding divide is the primary and solely Black-led enterprise fund on the continent, Black Seed VC.
Founder Karl Lokko launched the fund after beforehand failing to boost “a penny” for his healthcare startup. Final yr, he efficiently raised the primary £5m of a goal £10m fund; an achievement that Lokko hopes will turn into much less outstanding for Black founders in future.
Co-investment has been Black Seed’s path to success to this point. Lokko has neatly partnered with NatWest to assist over 10,000 Black entrepreneurs within the UK. That included internet hosting a startup weekend in Brixton, London, the place entrepreneurs might pitch to win a £10,000 money prize, in addition to quite a lot of workshops at Black Seed’s Brixton hub and on-line.
Alongside a fairer funding ecosystem, Black Seed’s mission assertion to nurture the world’s “first Black Silicon Valley” has potential to help within the UK’s financial restoration. It might additionally go far to repair the ethnicity pay hole by enabling Black founders to affix the highest revenue bracket.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Lokko sees the Black capital hole as first, a problem to beat, and second, a possibility to drive significant change. That’s what makes Black Seed a deserving winner for the 2025 Startups 100 DEI Award.
SHORTLISTED – PEEQUAL
Discriminatory practices usually disguise in plain sight. Nowhere is that extra true than within the queue for ladies’s bogs. It’s a truth of life that, wherever you might be — a gig, a soccer match, or a music pageant — the road for the women will all the time be miles longer than the lads’s.
Nevertheless it doesn’t need to be. PEEQUAL is a brand new, eco-friendly urinal designed for many who use girls’s bogs. Its ‘squat and go’ design signifies that six girls can wee directly, with no need three mates with open jackets to defend them from view.
That is about potty parity, not proportionality. Organic variations imply that girls usually take longer within the bathroom. But, traditionally, washrooms have allotted equal floorspace to women and men. PEEQUAL cubicles are six instances faster to make use of than present designs, working to make sure that the common time spent ready to make use of the bathroom is identical for each sexes.
It’s not simply the girlies who stand to learn. Main organisers (Glastonbury, London Marathon, and WOMAD are all companions) have all leapt on the alternative to fulfill extra clients and preserve a clean operating time for his or her occasions.
PEEQUAL has raised £500,000 in funding and now has plans to broaden to the Netherlands and Germany. It’s a pee-erfect nominee for the Startups 100 DEI Award.
SHORTLISTED – Bloom Cash
Each tradition has its personal distinctive traditions round cash. That may create points for UK migrants, who could discover themselves underserved by Western banks that lack culturally related monetary companies, comparable to cash golf equipment.
Bloom Cash is a brand new fintech that wishes to simplify the method of organising a cash membership (also referred to as an ajo, esusu, or pardna scheme) for British diaspora communities.
It’s a problem that wants fixing. Cash golf equipment are sometimes utilized by cultures throughout the globe as a substitute for financial institution loans, comparable to to save lots of for weddings. However with so many contributors, and with out the right know-how, organisers might be at greater danger of scams or thefts.
Bloom Cash’s purpose-built app helps to bridge the hole. Obtainable in 12 languages, it permits customers to handle their cash membership from one app, making a safer, simpler approach to assist family and friends, quite than depend on workarounds from present financial savings platforms.
Founder Nina Mohanty is aware of her viewers nicely. She has additionally partnered with organisations like Filipino UK Nurses to construct belief, and launched ‘Public Circles’; a function that permits people with out native connections to learn from collective monetary contributions.
By providing a protected, accessible, and culturally delicate platform for collective financial savings, Bloom Cash is addressing a major hole in conventional banking. It’s a worthy nominee for the 2025 Startups 100 DEI Award, and we will’t wait to see the startup attain full bloom.
SHORTLISTED – Cashblack
The worldwide anti-racism motion that started in 2020 has shone a light-weight on unacknowledged inequalities within the UK. Within the startup panorama, one of the eye-opening is the particular monetary challenges confronted by Black owned-businesses. The consequence? After beginning a enterprise, Black leaders have a mean turnover of £25,000, in comparison with £35,000 for White CEOs.
Cashblack is a purpose-led platform that’s in search of to fulfill clients and assist to shut the racial wealth hole. Greater than only a play on phrases, the fintech gives money again to members once they store with Black-owned retailers, making a mutually useful ecosystem the place patrons really feel incentivised to seek out, and store from, melanated moguls.
To date, Cashback has partnerships with over 800 Black-owned companies of various sizes. These span creators on Ebay and Etsy, but additionally meals distributors serving on Deliveroo, Simply Eat, and Uber Eats. Most impressively Amazon, the world’s largest on-line market, can be a companion, and homes a platform for Black-owned retailers to showcase their merchandise.
It’s not stopping there, although. In 2024, Cashblack launched Afrofiliate, an internet affiliate marketing programme which permits Black founders to succeed in new clients by influencer advertising, and create a military of model advocates who determine with the Cashblack mission.
Cashblack is rewriting the foundations of a sport that has unfairly deprived Black gamers for too lengthy. Right here’s a reward of its personal: a nominee for the 2025 Startups 100 DEI Award.
Click on under to find the nominees and winners for our different Startups 100 awards:
🌎 Startups 100 Sustainability Award 2025
💝 Startups 100 Social Impression Award 2025
📣 Startups 100 Advertising Award 2025

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