Bengaluru, January 25

 Sequoia Capital’s accelerator program, Surge has announced its sixth cohort of 20 early-stage start-ups.

The cohort includes start-ups from sectors such as SaaS, dev tools, cyber security, edtech, D2C, fintech and agritech. The 20 start-ups have collectively raised a total funding of $60 million from Surge and co-investors. Some of the start-ups in the sixth cohort include 10 Minute School, Airavana, Aqgromalin, Bamboobox, BiteSpeed, Blend, and Canary Mail, among others.

In this cohort, Surge has welcomed start-ups from Bangladesh,  Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan, in addition to India. “Many of our companies are building strong, digital foundations that are opening pathways to international markets. We’re excited to be part of our founders’ ambitious journeys, as they work towards becoming global businesses of the future,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Surge and Sequoia India.

With the sixth cohort, the Surge community now includes 246 founders from 112 start-ups across more than 15 sectors. There are 45 companies from the first four cohorts comprising 69 companies have raised follow-on funding.

Virtual programme

Surge 06 will kick off on January 27, 2022, where founders will go through a 16-week virtual programme. Past speakers and mentors in the programme include Ankiti Bose (Zilingo), Ashwini Asokan (vue.ai/Mad Street Den), Binny Bansal (Flipkart), Byju Raveendran (BYJU’S), Doug Leone (Sequoia Capital), Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks), Kunal Shah (CRED), Nithin Kamath (Zerodha), Sanjeev Bikchandani (InfoEdge) and Vidit Aatrey (Meesho).

Surge is Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for start-ups in India and South-East Asia. It combines $1 million to $2 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, a global curriculum and support from a community of exceptional mentors and founders.