Global venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has enlisted 20 startups across Southeast Asia and India for its accelerator’s second cohort – higher than the 17 picked for the previous batch.
The startups in the latest cohort, of which 12 come from India operating across sectors like education technology, digital media, software services, agri-tech and consumer brands, have collectively raised upwards of $45 million (about Rs 320 crore at current exchange rate), more than the $36 million raised by the previous batch.
The accelerator programme called Surge said that at least 80% of the startups in the latest cohort have come on board with investors.
Several angels and investment firms have made bets on these startups, including Omidyar Network, Omnivore Partners, Antler, Blume Ventures, Chiratae Ventures (formerly called IDG Ventures India), Tracxn Labs and Dragonfly Capital.
For example, Omidyar and Omnivore have invested in Bijak, a business-to-business agricultural trade platform that allows traders, wholesalers and processers to a keep a record of their transactions.
Blume Ventures and angel investors have funded Classplus, a mobile operating system that allows coaching institutes to streamline their operations by taking their setups and processes online to digital channels.
Chiratae and Tracxn have invested in Hevo Data, a unified data platform that helps companies understand and engage with their users and customers in a more efficient way. Tracxn has also invested in Klub, a fintech startup providing growth financing to brands. AngelList, Better Capital, EMVC Fintech Fund and angel investors have also invested in Klub.
Other startups that have raised funding include nanotechnology company Log9 Materials, neo-bank firm Juno, do-it-yourself video creation platform InVideo, robotics platform Cognicept and e-commerce platform Brick&Bolt.
Some of the mentors on Surge include Byju Raveendran of ed-tech startup Byju’s, Deepinder Goyal of food-technology platform Zomato, Ritesh Agarwal of hotel firm OYO, Kunal Shah of Cred, Ankiti Bose of Zilingo and Ashwini Asokan of Mad Street Den.
