Catalyst South LEPs to use mnAI to identify female business owners across the UK

Harnessing AI to identify female business owners

Catalyst South is an alliance of six Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) who are piloting the use of mnAI to identify, approach and engage with female-led businesses across the South.

Looking ahead to ways that LEPs can improve and target their support to women-owned businesses in different sectors, the Coast to Capital LEP has been piloting AI data analysis technology, “mnAI’s data allows us to identify businesses on our doorstep with great growth potential and reach out to them with information on grants, support, mentoring and events available through our Growth Hubs. It removes the unintentional barriers.”

Powered by mnAI, the platform will unlock new opportunities to support businesses including:

• a deeper understanding of the number of female-led businesses across different geographies and sectors
• providing baseline analysis by geography and sector on Growth Hub engagement with women led businesses
• using data to ensure equal business support opportunities are provided
• the ability to work collaboratively with partners to engage with women led businesses

As Chair of Coast to Capital LEP, Julie Kapsalis has one overriding priority:

“I want to make a step change in the way we address equality and diversity. The Rose Review tells us that female businesses could generate an extra £250 billion of value. I passionately believe we need to create a true level playing field for women to access our networks, support and finance.”

mnAI data helps Coast to Capital identify businesses, and gives rapid insights into local trends in far greater detail than is possible by conventional means.

John Cushing of mnAI explains:

“Our machine learning algorithms track gender diversity across all UK boards and shareholders, with interactive results available at a click. They give our clients the ability to be proactive: to track regional or local trends and to identify particular needles in the haystack – young female founders under 30 say, or all female-owned businesses in a particular sector. These data and analyses help LEPs to achieve their goals.”

Learn more about our gender technology by clicking here