Surge, Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s scale-up programme, has selected 12 early-stage startups building in sectors like AI, gaming in the Metaverse, health tech, new consumer brands and climate tech as part of its eighth cohort.
Started in 2019, Surge picks startups for its cohort twice a year, and is for companies based in, or solving for, the Indian and Southeast Asian markets. Each cohort typically includes 10 to 20 companies and trains founders for 16 weeks. The programme covers the fundamentals of company building and ends with an investor week called UpSurge.
Half of Surge 08 startups have at least one female founder. Several 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 startup list in Surge 08 includes Arintra, AltWorld, Masterchow, Metastable Materials, Requestly, Meragi, among others.
“Surge 08 founders are building next-gen products and businesses that have the potential to revolutionise their sectors over the next decade. 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…,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, and Surge.
Surge’s curated community of startups now includes eight cohorts, 300+ founders and 130+ startups across 16+ sectors. So far, Surge startups have collectively raised over $2 billion in follow-on funding from Surge and co-investors.