Men have traditionally been at the forefront of some of the world's biggest businesses but a special project is hoping to change that by helping women to start and grow their own brands.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's Women in Business program provides funding and coaching for small and medium sized businesses that are owned by or led by women.

Since 2014, the EBRD has provided $654 million of funding in 23 different countries and reached 35,000 women in nations where cultural traditions can make it hard for them to start their own businesses.

Ines Rocha, Director of the EBRD Small Business Initiative, told CGTN: "So historically, what we have seen is that female entrepreneurs face significant challenges, for example, in terms of access to finance. Often, they don't have enough collateral, for example, to access loans.

"This could be, for example, because historically men will have more assets than the woman or the assets will be in the name of the husband, as opposed to the woman who wants to start up a business."

The EBRD are helping to find a solution to this problem by providing cash loans to female entrepreneurs. Their funding has helped Jelena Popovic, the CEO of Serbian company Iceberg Salat Centar to make crucial developments to her business.

"We implemented an information system into our company, an ERP system, so at the click of a button I have all the information I need for my managerial decisions, like how much I sell, what products are going. 

"I have the data in real life, in real-time. So they helped me and supported me financially in the implementation of this project.”

Support is also provided through leadership coaching and financial advice from experienced business leaders. Azra Atagic-Catovic, the Managing Director of business portal Akta in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has tapped into this offering to help to grow her business.

"In our first project with the EBRD we implemented a web application for our website, so we now have an application for iOS and Android devices. For our second project, we have used consultancy services for strategy.

"We hope that this will help us a lot because we want to go a step further and make our business better and bigger and to go to the regional market."

The long term aim of the program is to help countries to boost their economies through the empowerment of women in business.

Rocha added: "Eighty-three percent of women-led businesses in the Western Balkans have actually increased their turnover within a year of completing an advisory project and 64 percent of women-owned businesses increased employment within a year of completing an advisory project. For the Western Balkans, this would be a net increase of 1847 jobs."

Video editing: Nuri Moseinco. Video producer: Alec Fenn.