Sequoia Capital had run a successful accelerator programme for startups called Surge and now the company’s Indian arm is getting ready for Surge 02. There will be some changes in the second edition of the programme while many aspects may remain the same.
The duration of the programme will be the same 16 weeks and the batch size too will remain much the same, 16 startups. The venture capital firm has called for applications for Surge 02 and the last date to send in the application is July 15.
Some of the basic things to be understood about this programme are that it is meant for early-stage startups which expect to do business in India or Southeast Asian markets only. The sectors the startups are picked up from, include consumer internet, media, enterprise software, or healthcare, fintech and direct to consumer brands.
The difference is being brought about in the amount of investment being made by Sequoia in the startups chosen for the programme. While the earlier version had a fixed sum of $1.5 million, in Surge 02, it will be a flexible range of $1million to $2 million. There are two reasons for this. One is that the individual founders may have different requirements and if a startup needs only $1 million, why thrust $1.5 million down its throat? The second is that there are co-investors who come forward to make the investments in the startups. The flexibility allows Sequoia to make the adjustments in such cases as well.
In the first lot, the total investments in startups after including the amounts put in by the co-investors stood between $1.5 million and $3.3 million.
The other change or improvement in Surge 02 is the waiver of the programme fees. The sessions will start in September 2019.
In the previous edition, they started with as many as 1500 or more applications. The final 16 startups that got chosen belonged to eight different countries in the region.
One will have to wait till July-August to know the figures for Surge 02.