Accel India has selected 14 startups as part of its first cohort of Atoms programme that was launched last year to make pre-seed funding in startups.
"At the time we invested in them, 12 were at pre-revenue stage, and 5 of them did not even have a product with just a team, an idea and a pitch deck," Prayank Swaroop, partner, Accel India told VCCircle.
The Atoms programme offers $250,000 pre-seed capital to each startup as an ‘uncapped convertible note’, which will convert to equity only in the next round,
Accel received more than 3000 applications that was led by consumer and direct-to-consumer (D2C) startups (22%) followed by software-as-a-service (SasS) businesses. This was followed startups from business-to-business (B2B) (13%), fintech (12%), edtech (7%) and healthcare/biotech (7%) sectors, and the remaining from other sectors.
The 14 startups selected by Accel is dominated by startups from from SaaS, consumer and DTC and web3.
The startups from the web3 space include Fragmynt, which is rebuilding the stock market for the world, powered by web3; and GoSats, which allows users to hold full ownership of the Bitcoin they earn, and can freely transfer it to external crypto wallets.
The cohort also includes an edtech startup Kluster, the community platform designed specifically for peer-to-peer learning, with gamification, knowledge management and embedded learning tools; and B2B startup Material Depot, which helps architects and designers to discover materials and trends.
Other selected companies in the cohort are Brew Money, a neobank startup; Bytebeam, which helps simplify cloud for smart device manufacturers; Dubdub.ai, which helps sales and marketing teams build multilingual video content; Fitbudd, a personalized coaching startup; Jify, which is building a financial wellness platform to enable employees to instantly access, save and manage their salary; Nymble, a food-tech startup building a robot chef which can cook curated meals for users at the press of a button; Rigi, which helps creators take care of periodic subscription reminders, retargeting and promotions; Spendflo, which helps high growth companies buy, negotiate and renew their SaaS tools; and Onesto Labs, a house of brands focused on beauty and personal care.
The cohort also includes an unidentified startup in stealth mode in the women’s wellness space.
Four of the startups including Fitbudd, Jify and GoSats also have women as CEO/co-founders.
Swaroop also said that a lot of these selected startup are already in conversation with a bunch of investors for the seed round of funding and some of them have received a term sheet as well. But not everyone wants to raise capital, he added.
He noted that Accel will be investing in the seed round of funding of these selected startups.
"In all these companies we will definitely do pro rata and depending on the companies we may co-lead the rounds also. So, we will build ownership in some companies in multiple rounds from our fund," he added
He also said that for its second cohort, Accel will open applications to startups from Southeast Asia as well as it recieved lot of interest from this market after India for its first cohort itself.
Besides, Southeast Asia is a natural extension for Accel as it has done deals in the region, said Swaroop. Just last month, Accel India led a $55 million funding round in Southeast Asia focused investing super app Pluang.
Swaroop also said that the second cohort will be smaller in size with around 10 startups as it wants to give a more personalised attention to the companies.
He added that Accel India currently has no plans to launch a separate pre-seed fund dedicated to Atoms. The venture capital firm invests in its Atoms' startups from its main fund. Accel is currently investing out of its sixth fund of $550 million.
Accel is not the only venture offering early-stage mentorship programmes. In 2019, Sequoia Capital had launched Surge, under which it invests $1-3 million in exchange for equity, while providing mentorship and connections at an early stage. Subsequently, Sequoia Capital also floated a seed fund to invest in its Surge portfolio firms.