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Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up programme, launched its sixth cohort, where Sequoia Capital India and its co-investors invested in 20 early-stage startups, with funding totalling $60 million.

The cohort featured startups belonging to SaaS, Dev Tools, cybersecurity, edtech, D2C, fintech, and agritech sectors, who are leveraging tech to solve some of the biggest challenges faced by consumers and businesses globally. 

According to Sequoia, this batch of startups is geographically diverse. While 50 percent of companies are based in India, it got new entrants from Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan, alongwith companies from Bangladesh and Australia.

Surge 06 will kick off on January 27, where founders will go through a rigorous 16-week virtual programme.

Some of the past speakers and mentors in the programme included 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).

“The exceptional calibre and talent displayed by the founders of each new Surge cohort continue to humble us. Every founder brings with them the kind of bold innovation and purpose the world needs to solve some of the most pressing problems today,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Surge and Sequoia India.

He added, “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.”

Surge 06 Cohort

Surge 06 featured the largest number of software startups, who focus on cybersecurity, customer engagement, talent development, payments, digital learning, mentoring, retail investing, etc.

At present, two cybersecurity startups are in stealth mode.

Here’s a list of Surge 06 startups:

• 10 Minute School: 10 Minute School provides affordable and accessible education for K-12 and college students, university admission test candidates, job-seekers, and people looking for specialised skills training in Bangladesh. 

• Airavana: Airavana reduces privacy risks and improves data security while providing customer data discovery across more than 150 cloud applications. It enables enterprises to manage and protect customers’ personal data in consonance with privacy regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). 

• Aqgromalin: Aqgromalin is building a full-stack agritech platform to help farmers diversify into animal husbandry and aquaculture. The Chennai-based startup provides a data-backed traceable supply chain to farmers, butchers, and meat companies for their poultry, seafood, and livestock needs.

• BambooBox: AI-powered SaaS platform BambooBox helps companies build high-quality pipelines through engagement across an entire account than a single lead. 

• BiteSpeed: BiteSpeed is building a conversational commerce stack for D2C brands, which will enable online brands to interact with customers and sell products on apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Using chat as the core communication channel, BiteSpeed solves for the entire ecommerce customer journey, from retargeting to providing shipping updates to customer support.

• Blend: Blend is on a mission to turn every online seller into an ecommerce pro with an AI graphic design and marketing app that creates product visuals, social graphics, product descriptions, and ads in seconds.

• Canary Mail: Canary Mail is reimagining email security for modern businesses and individuals. With easy to use email encryption, protection from inbound threats, and human error prevention, Canary Mail delivers 360-degree email security and helps achieve regulatory compliance without compromising on user experience. 

• Checkbox: Checkbox, a no-code Expert Process Automation (EPA) platform, enables business users to develop their tools and software using intuitive ‘drag and drop’ technology.  

• Cooby: Cooby is reimagining sales management for a messaging-first world by building the best-in-class engagement and team management solutions on top of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and LINE. 

• Grupin: Indonesia-based social commerce platform Grupin offers an interactive community-based shopping experience to consumers, along with the benefit of large discounts on bulk consumer products. 

• HelloMida: Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) fashion brand HelloMida is built on a real-time retail model that empowers Southeast Asia’s digitally native Gen Z consumers to express and celebrate their individualism.

• IIMMPACT: IIMMPACT is a one-stop platform for payments and data aggregation for Southeast Asian companies. It aims to help Southeast Asian companies build fintech solutions by providing a full suite of world-class APIs, ranging from mobile top-ups, utility bills, government services, insurance, and travel under one umbrella. 

• Infina: Retail investing app Infina makes it easy for young tech-savvy Vietnamese to start their investing journey with minimal risk. 

• Manatal: The end-to-end recruitment and onboarding SaaS platform is on a mission to transform how the world recruits. Using an AI-powered Applicant Tracking System, Manatal helps companies onboard in minutes, leveraging the latest technologies to win the war for talent.

• Peakperformer: Peakperformer aims to democratise leadership coaching for managers at all levels and help them build behavioural skills in an engaging, measurable, and continuous manner. The digital coaching platform enables organisations to create strong leaders at all career levels.

• ScanPay: ScanPay aims to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) accept payments from customers seamlessly using just a smartphone. 

• Shajgoj Limited: Shajgoj is on a mission to inspire every woman to celebrate beauty with confidence by providing authentic products at reasonable prices from renowned brands and local distributors through its physical stores and online platforms. 

• Toplyne: Toplyne helps revenue teams at product-led SaaS companies to convert freemium users to paid subscribers. The plug-and-play platform enables sales teams at product-led growth (PLG) companies to identify accounts most likely to convert by analysing user behaviours within a product and determining which users have shown high intent to buy.