Simran Kaur
Founder, Girls That Invest
Simran Kaur is a New Zealand entrepreneur and the founder of Girls That Invest (now Friends That Invest), the financial-education media company and podcast built to help women take control of their money.
Kaur graduated with a Bachelor of Optometry from the University of Auckland, a qualification she has never practised. Instead, she co-founded Girls That Invest with her best friend Sonya Gupthan in March 2020, during Auckland’s first lockdown. The idea was simple: investing felt intimidating, jargon-heavy and unwelcoming to women and social media could change that. What started as an Instagram page and podcast quickly found an audience far larger than either founder expected.
The podcast became the number-one business podcast in the United States, Canada and New Zealand in 2021 and the number-two in the United Kingdom. It has now surpassed eight million downloads across more than 150 countries. Kaur published Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks, which topped bestseller charts in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. An updated edition has since been released under the rebranded name Friends That Invest.
The platform has grown well beyond content. Nearly 7,000 women have completed its six-week investing masterclass, annual revenue exceeds US million and the brand reaches more than 350,000 followers across social media. Kaur has spoken at TEDx in the United States and Google Talks and has been featured in Vogue, Business Insider and the Oxford Women in Business programme.
The recognition has been international in scale: Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2023, a 2024 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellowship, the University of Auckland’s 40 Under 40 and 2024 Young New Zealander of the Year.
Kaur’s profile is noteworthy because she built a lockdown side project into the world’s number-one investing podcast for women, proving that financial education delivered in the right voice and on the right channels can reach an audience that traditional finance has consistently overlooked.
Simran features in our look at how NZ fintech founders disagree about money.
Sources: Kiwibank NZ Awards · University of Auckland · Cartier Women’s Initiative
About this profile
This profile was researched and written by Noteworthy using publicly available sources. If something here is out of date or incorrect, let us know and we’ll review it.
