India’s largest venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital India is launching a startup accelerator and incubation programme called “Surge”. The firm will pick up to 10-20 early stage startups every year( twice) and likely to invest $1.5 million in each of the startups at the start of the programme. As per reports, the firm is to invest over $100 million in the next 4-5 years in the new beginning.
The incubation programme is all set to target startups both in India and Southeast Asia across modules like deep tech, healthcare technology, fintech, consumer internet, enterprise software, and direct-to-consumer brands or crypto.
The company wants to trigger the startups which are underserved and unlike other accelerator programmes which take startups from Zero to seed funding. Surge focuses on bringing these startups from seed to series A. There will be a participation fee for the startups in Surge but is waived off for the first batch.
Highlights of the Surge
Every batch will last for about 16 weeks. The programme will have top entrepreneurs from its portfolio as its mentors namely OYO’s Ritesh Agarwal, Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal, Freshwork’s Girish Mathrubootham, and Indonesian ride-hailing major Go-Jek’s Nadiem Makrim. The startups will also have access to the AMP- Advancement Management Programme by Sequoia’s US unit.
At the end of the programme, the company plans to invite other venture capital firms by setting an investor week to boost the startups. Sequoia, in the past, has a success backing startups like Prizm, Citrus, and SCIO Health.
The initiation taken by the firm is to narrow down some loses caused by the low fundings and angel tax issue. The bold step taken by the firm could prompt other large venture capital firms to initiate similar programmes.
