Surge, a rapid scale-up programme for startups run by Sequoia India, has announced the 15 early-stage startups selected for its third cohort, which is underway.
The programme combines US$1 million to US$2 million of capital for each startup, with company-building workshops and support from a community of exceptional mentors and founders from companies like gojek, ONE Championship and Tokopedia.
The Surge 03 cohort includes startups from Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and India, who are solving a wide range of problems across a diverse set of industry verticals, including SaaS, development tools, consumer, F&B, education and Health.
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The founders are from eight nationalities, including India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Italy, Canada, Barbados and Sweden.
More than half the current cohort is from Southeast Asia, while one-third of Surge 03 startups have at least one female founder.
The 15 startups have collectively raised US$39 million as part of the programme.
Since its launch in March 2019, Surge has grown into a community of more than 110 founders from 52 startups, spread across six countries.
Surge 03, which started on 13th April, is taking place completely online for the first time. Day-long sessions held once a week for 16 weeks, include online company-building workshops, small group discussions and interactive fireside chats with Surge mentors such as William Tanuwijaya, Founder and CEO of Tokopedia; Doug Leone, Global Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital; and many other experienced founders and investors from Vietnam, Indonesia, India and the US.
The eight startups from Southeast Asia are:
Bukukas (Indonesia): Helps owners of MSMEs understand and manage their financial flows more effectively with an easy-to-use digital ledger they can download on their smartphone.
Hangry (Indonesia): A cloud kitchen that serves up multiple in-house ‘virtual restaurant’ brands for online orders and delivery.
CoLearn (Indonesia): An edutech platform that empowers tuition centres and tutors to create online learning experiences for their students.
Thuocsi (Vietnam): An online B2B marketplace for pharmaceutical, health and personal care needs.
Pencil (Singapore): Brings the scale of algorithms to the creative process by generating ads that are predicted to work. It is the first generative creative platform for performance advertising teams in brands and agencies.
Pentester Academy (Singapore): Trains security professionals on the art and science of defeating hackers and making the internet safer. It does this by replacing theory classes with practical experiences that are both fun and edifying.
Tigerhall (Singapore): A mobile learning platform that aims to help professionals achieve their career and life goals by learning directly from Asia’s most successful people.
Tinvio (Singapore): A communication and commerce platform built around the idea that merchants and suppliers should be able to work smarter together.
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Image Credit: Surge
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