Sequoia’s Surge features 15 startups from India, SEA in seventh cohort – TechCrunch

Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia has revealed the 15 early-stage startups it has selected for the seventh cohort of its Surge accelerator program, pushing for new investments even as deal activity in the region has slowed significantly.

Since launch in March 2019the accelerator has helped its participating startups collectively raise more than $1.7 billion in follow-on funding, the venture capital firm said, with more than 60% of companies from the first five cohorts raising their Series A and beyond.

The Surge program, which has supported more than 250 startups, initially wrote startups checks for about $1 million each, but after increased the amount of support to 3 million dollars. Some notable startups from early Surge cohorts include Doubtnut, Scaler Academy, Khatabook, Bijak, Classplus, Hevo Data, Juno, Atlan, BukuKas, Plum and Apna Club.

The new cohort includes startups that are trying to implement tools to simplify work processes as well as solve more serious problems, including climate change.

Sequoia said its cohort includes some of the startups it worked with when they didn’t have a product, as well as those led by repeat founders and entrepreneurs with extensive experience in their respective sectors. These founders include the former CFO of fashion e-commerce platform Nykaa, machine learning engineers who worked on conversational AI at Meta, and Uber’s first batch of engineers in India.

“We continue to be deeply impressed by the ambition and diversity of ideas and the caliber of founders in each cohort. Surge 07 is no exception. We work with all of our early stage companies and almost half of them are still in the pre-launch stage at the start of our partnership,” Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia India & Southeast Asia and Surge, said in a prepared statement.

“Our founders bring with them a wealth of experience and creativity, and we believe these dreamers, innovators and category creators have the potential to change the future of our region and the world,” he added.

Most startups in the new cohort are building for global markets and targeting audiences beyond their headquarters. Almost half of them are present in the US and European markets, Sequoia said.

The founders of Surge’s seventh cohort will undergo a 16-week hybrid program to receive training and mentorship from industry veterans and established entrepreneurs.

Below is the list of startups available in the seventh cohort.

• Attentive, a vertical SaaS company, is building a sales automation platform for US outdoor contractors. (Information Edge Ventures is a co-investor.)
• Ray creates a one-click payment solution that allows sellers and buyers in Southeast Asia to pay seamlessly. (Partech Partners is a co-investor.)
• Boxes is promoting a design-to-build automation platform for architects, interior designers and construction companies.
• BuyerAssist aims to help B2B revenue teams with so-called Mutual Success Plans (MSPs) align and effectively collaborate with their buyers throughout the journey. (Emergent Ventures and Stellaris Venture Partners are co-investors.)
• ClearFeed is a collaboration platform that uses artificial intelligence models to enable natural language ticketing in Slack and Microsoft Teams and provides seamless connectivity to server-side ticketing tools such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and Freshdesk. (8VC is a co-investor.)
• Hon uses artificial intelligence to create personalized videos at scale, empowering brands to build personal connections with their customers. (It has also received funding from Emergent Ventures.)
• Hut aims to provide engineering managers and leaders with the visibility and insight to help them build productive and healthy engineering teams. (Kae Capital is an investor.)
• Meta school says it makes it easier for developers to learn, build and deliver dApps to prepare them for opportunities in the new web3 ecosystem. (Luno, Global Ventures and Polygon Ventures are co-investors.)
• PixCap is an animation platform that allows users with no design experience to create animations for 3D illustration, games, and design. (Cocoon Capital and Entrepreneur First are co-investors.)
• Pratech brands plans to help today’s Indian consumers improve their quality of life through superior home and health products.
• Families creates a complete technology solution for Indonesia’s agricultural sector. (Beenext is a co-investor.)
• TrueFoundry is a developer platform that aims to help startups deploy and monitor machine learning (ML) models at the speed of large tech companies – in minutes or days instead of weeks or months. (Eniac Ventures is a co-investor.)
• Solve carbon helps companies track and reduce carbon emissions with its software. (Alpha JWC Ventures, Amasia, GFC, Rebel Fund, XA Network and Y Combinator.)
• Whistle is a fintech company in Indonesia where it focuses on serving teenagers. (AC Ventures, Alpha JWC Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Ondine Capital and Y Combinator also backed the startup.)

One startup in this cohort is currently in the stealth space, but has revealed that it is working in the travel space.