SUMMARY
Surge 06 will kick off from January 27, will offer scale-up support and capital to founders
Sixth Cohort of startups spans from fintech to agtech
Seventeen of the selected startups have collectively raised $60 Mn from Surge and other co-investors so far
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, on November 25, announced the names of the 20 startups shortlisted for the Sixth Cohort of the Surge programme.
While Indian startups formed the bulk of the Sixth Cohort, 10 home-grown startups made the cut. Most of the selected startups belong to the software domain with others spanning sectors from fintech to agtech.
9 names have been announced while 1 other startup continues to remain in, what the accelerator calls, ‘stealth-mode.’
Surge 06 will kick off on January 27. As part of the accelerator programme, founders will go through a 16-week virtual project that will offer scale up support, along with additional capital from a clutch of investors.
Of the shortlisted startups, 17 of them have collectively raised $60 Mn from Surge and other co-investors so far.
Surge has so far evaluated over 10,000 startups over the years. The Surge community, now, includes 246 founders from 112 startups across more than 15 sectors, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cybersecurity, fintech and others.
The Surge accelerator, in a statement, said that, “We’re incredibly inspired by this diverse group of mission-driven founders, who are solving important problems in our region and across the world – from helping farmers improve their incomes and the overall quality of the agricultural supply chain, to democratising access to high-quality education, enhancing Internet and data security, and more.”
Meet The Indian Startups Who Made It To Surge 06
Founders: Ashish Verma and Kedar Kekan
Headquarters: India and U.S
Founded In: 2021
Airavana is an AI-powered cloud platform for personal data discovery across cloud applications.The startup reduces privacy risks, improves data security and enables enterprises to manage and protect customers’ personal data in consonance with privacy regulations.
Founders: Bharani CL and Prasanna Manogaran
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2020
Aqgromalin is a Chennai-based full-stack agtech startup that enables farmers to diversify into animal husbandry and aquaculture.
Founders: Ankur Saigal and Divyesh Dixit
Headquarters: India and UK
Founded In: 2021
BambooBox is an AI-powered SaaS startup that enables businesses to personalise sales and marketing efforts by predicting purchase intent for better customer engagement.
Founder: Vinayak Aggarwal
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2019
BiteSpeed allows online D2C brands to interact with their customers and sell their products on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger using chat as a core communication channel.
Founders: Jamsheed Kamardeen, Vaibhav Prakash and Vishwanath Kollapudi
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2021
Blend is an SMB-focused graphic design platform and marketing app that helps companies create product visuals, product descriptions and ads in seconds.
Founders: Dev Sanghani and Sohel Sanghani
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2017
Canary Mail is a secure email client with end-to-end PGP encryption. The Machine Learning-backed startup delivers email security and helps brands achieve regulatory compliance without compromising on user experience.
Founders: Aishwarya Goel and Nilesh Agarwal
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2020
Peakperformer is a tech-enabled coaching startup for managers that offers scalable, high impact leadership development solutions for different management levels.
Founder: Venkat Paruchuri
Headquarters: India
Founded In: 2021
ScanPay helps small and medium Businesses(SMBs) accept payments from customers using just a smartphone.
Founders: Rishen Kapoor, Rohit Khanna and Ruchin Kulkarni
Headquarters: India and U.S
Founded In: 2021
Toplyne is a SaaS platform that enables product-led growth (PLG) companies to increase their freemium user conversion rates.
Other startups that are part of Sequoia Surge’s 06 batch include 10 Minute School, Checkbox, Cooby, Grupin, HelloMida, IIMMPACT, Infina, Manatal.
