The eighth cohort features 30 founders who will go through a 16-week programme that offers support for their startups to scale-up, along with $1-$2 million in capital from Sequoia and co-investments from other investors, Surge said in a statement on Wednesday.
Launched in 2019, the Surge programme now comprises more than 300 founders and over 130 startups across 16 sectors.
Surge 08 includes startups that are building products in climate tech, artificial intelligence, metaverse, digital health, new consumer brands and new models of ecommerce. Till date, Surge startups have collectively raised more than $2 billion in follow-on funding from Surge and co-investors.
Half of the Surge 08 startups have at least one female founder, including an AI and natural language processing PhD holder focused on AI in healthcare and two medical doctors from Indonesia, the statement added.
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Surge 08 includes two health tech companies, two climate-tech companies, a metaverse gaming platform, an AI company working with NASA, as well as three consumer companies that are building new-age brands in the home decor, food and wedding sectors.“These diverse set of founders each bring with them unique experiences and expertise to create ambitious and differentiated products and platforms to the problems they are tackling — and we are excited to be a part of their early company-building journeys,” said Rajan Anandan, managing director at Sequoia India & Southeast Asia and Surge.
Many founders are building for global markets from day one, and half of the startups in Surge 08 are looking to expand into the US, Europe and Canada, the statement said.
The chosen 12 startups include AI-powered autonomous medical coding platform Arintra, metaverse gaming platform AltWorld, metaverse product Bitfrost, Anicut Capital-backed direct-to-consumer brand MasterChow and Avana Capital founder Anjali Bansal-backed home products brand Vaaree.