Brown Girl Magazine, CEO Trisha Sakhuja-Walia Selected To Join Andreessen Horowitz Talent & Opportunity University Accelerator Program

Coming off the heels of celebrating its four year anniversary as a company, the women-of-color owned and operated BrownGirlMagazine.com’s (BGM) CEO, Trisha Sakhuja-Walia has been selected to join the prestigious Andreesen Horowitz (a16z) Talent & Opportunity (TxO) University Accelerator Program. Chosen out of hundreds of submissions, Sakhuja-Walia is one of ten of the most promising companies to join the TxO Initiative and take part in the January-June ’22 session of TxO University.

TxO University is a 6-month long accelerator program that provides cultural creators with access to a new system of funding, training, mentorship, and community to help them build durable, and successful companies around their cultural innovations.

“It’s a huge honor to be accepted into this program,” says Sakhuja-Walia.
“As an immigrant and a woman-of-color, I don’t take this opportunity lightly, especially considering how very little venture funding is available for founders like myself. More so, this opportunity is directly tied to the resurrection of the BLM movement, which has helped catapult growth for the BIPOC community and has allowed us to have our moment. For A16Z to target a niche community like ours gives me hope that platforms like BrownGirlMagazine.com are finally becoming a part of the mainstream fabric of this country. It proves we are undeniable in our reach and impact.”

At the age of five, Sakhuja-Walia immigrated from India to Queens, New York. Experiencing a cross-cultural upbringing alongside a hyphenated identity set her on a mission to carve out a space for South Asians with relatable stories in the diaspora. With her larger than life vision, Sakhuja-Walia is driven to scale BrownGirlMagazine.com into a multi-platform media powerhouse that empowers and engages the South Asian diaspora through user-generated content, culturally relevant products, and events and activations to continue building the community at-large.

In addition to publishing content online and on social media, Brown Girl has crossed over into apparel with a line called LadkiPower (Ladki is ‘girl’ in Hindi) and a podcast titled The Chaat Room, where they interview South Asians in Hollywood. BGM founded the very first Slashie Summit in New York City. Slashie Summit is a mission-driven community focused on elevating those with a side hustle (it pivoted to SlashieConnects.com over the course of the pandemic). Establishing a footprint in publishing, BGM published their first print anthology for young adults, ‘untold: defining moments of the uprooted,’ with an indie publisher.

With Sakhuja-Walia’s lead and a team of more than 200 passionate freelancers, the women-of-color owned and run BrownGirlMagazine.com continues to serve as an anchor for South Asians over the past decade by remaining steadfast in publishing premium, multimedia content that uplifts, creates deeper understanding and connection, and cultivates meaningful dialogue in communities around the globe. With the support of the TxO program, the South Asian trailblazer will be able to employ writers and editors full-time at the magazine, signifying a major turning point in their growth.