Surge, a Sequoia Capital-operated scale-up programme for startups in India and Southeast Asia, has announced the 20 new startups graduating from its sixth cohort.
Of the total 20 startups, 17 have already received US$60 million funding from Sequoia and other investors. Surge stated in an announcement that the sixth batch comprises the largest number of software startups, with more than half building and providing cloud infrastructure, developer tools, data protection, and SaaS. Other startups belong to the categories: cybersecurity, fintech, agritech, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, and edutech.
“As many products and services continue to move online, we’re starting to see greater diversity in the types of SaaS startups applying to and taking part in Surge,” noted the programme. “Sixty per cent of Surge 06 companies are building solutions for global markets from day one.”
For the first time, Surge also has onboarded startups from Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan, besides India, which is home to 50 per cent of participants.
Below is a snapshot of the five startups based out of Southeast Asia:
- Grupin is an Indonesia-based social commerce platform offering an interactive, community-based shopping experience to consumers, along with the benefit of large discounts on bulk consumer products.
- Infina is a retail investment software that allows young, tech-savvy Vietnamese to start investing with little sum and lower risk.
- IIIMMPACT is a Malaysia-based fintech firm that provides a full suite of APIs ranging from mobile top-ups, utility bills, government services, insurance and travel under one umbrella.
- Manatal is a Thailand-based SaaS platform for end-to-end recruiting and onboarding.
- HelloMida is a Vietnam-located DTC fashion brand that allows Southeast Asia’s digitally native GenZ customers to express and celebrate their uniqueness through a real-time retail model.
Also read: Startup funding rounds: A handbook from seed to exit
Launched in 2019 by Sequoia India, Surge has evaluated over 10,000 companies for its accelerator programme and has grown to a network of 112 startups and 246 founders.
Upon joining each cohort, startups will receive a seed investment of around US$1 million to US$2 million. The four-month programme also provides training, global immersion tours, and assistance from a network of extraordinary mentors coming from successful companies such as Gojek, Google, Uber, WhatsApp, Zilingo, and more.
Surge focuses on early-stage projects, which mean that participant could be someone with an idea and a slide deck or an early-stage founding team that already has the product-market fit and a round of seed funding.
The programme’s goal is to supercharge these projects and give them an unfair advantage to scale and grow, form a team, make smart business model choices right from the get-go, and raise a Series A round soon after. At the end of Surge, founders will have the opportunity to raise capital during an “UpSurge” week from a curated list of angels, seed funds and VCs.
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Image Credit: Surge
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