Sequoia picks 7 Indian startups for its third Surge cohort

Sequoia Capital has announced its third Surge cohort and has selected 15 startups based in Southeast Asia and India for the 16-week long program. 

Given the travel ban and lockdown imposed in many countries to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, Surge’s third cohort was kicked off on April 13 using Zoom.

The new batch has startups across SaaS, dev tools, consumer internet, fitness, F&B, education, and health. The chosen startups are Atlan, BukuKas, CoLearn, Convosight, DrinkPrime, Fittr, Hangry, Last9, Pencil, Pentester Academy, Procol, Thuocsi, Togerhall, and Tinvio. 

The seven Indian startups in the third cohort are Atlan, Fittr, DrinkPrime, Procol, Last9, Convosight, and a direct to consumer startup in stealth mode.

A blog post by Sequoia said that 80% of the Surge 03 startups are coming onboard with institutional co-investors and almost half have angel co-investors. Collectively, this cohort has raised over $39 million in their Surge rounds, the post said. 

Like the previous cohorts, these startups will get monetary support of $1-2 million from Sequoia and co-investments from other institutional and angel investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and Blume Ventures.

While the first cohort was launched in March 2019 with 17 startups, 20 startups were picked for the second program in October. With the third cohort, the community has grown to over 110 founders with 52 startups based in six countries in just one year. Out of the 52 startups, 27 are from India.

The announcement comes at a time when startups are facing a steep challenge managing their capital, rethink their business models and even rejig their workforce as the economy faces a downturn due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. 

Early in March, Sequoia had termed the coronavirus outbreak as ‘The Black Swan of 2020’ and had warned its portfolio companies to brace for tough times ahead.