Rajan Anandan, managing director of Peak XV, told ET that this is Surge’s most broad-based cohort, both geographically and across sectors.
This also marks Surge’s second cohort since Peak XV Partners was formed following the split from Sequoia Capital.
The tenth cohort includes companies like Brainfish, Auquan, Dubbing AI, Orbitshift, Ambak, Parseable, SalarySe, and Wobot AI in the AI and financial services space. Other startups include Amaani, Clout Kitchen, Dezy, The Health Factory, Tailcall, and a stealth-mode healthcare startup.
“In this cohort, we have companies from India, Southeast Asia, Australia, China, the UK, and the US. We also have our first company from the Middle East… In our last cohort, we had a lot of deeptech and semiconductor companies. When you combine that with the current cohort, it’s a representation of where the Indian startup ecosystem is today—broad-based innovation across sectors, which is unique to India,” said Anandan.
In its ninth cohort, Surge had backed 13 ventures focused on deeptech, AI, advanced manufacturing, and quantum computing.
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Since its launch in 2019, Surge has supported over 150 startups across 17 sectors. Notable startups backed by Surge over the years include InCore, Mindgrove, Ethereal Machines, Scaler Academy, Khatabook, Log 9 Materials, Plum, and Lambda Test.Initially, Surge invested $1–2 million per startup but has since raised the ceiling to $3 million, allowing for a broader range of companies to participate.
“One of the design choices that we made at Surge is to have small cohorts. Our cohorts will go from 10 to 20. We do not have a hard and fast rule that there needs to be 10 or 15 or 20. In general, we want to partner with the best founders that we can find in sectors that we think are very interesting,” Anandan added.
In addition to receiving up to $3 million in seed funding, founders benefit from support and guidance from the Surge investment and operating teams, covering areas such as hiring, product development, tech, and marketing. The programme also offers company-building workshops and mentorship.
The Surge 10 programme will run from October 2024 to February 2025.
Past speakers and mentors at Surge include Tokopedia cofounder William Tanuwijaya, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Zerodha CEO Nitin Kamath, Cred founder Kunal Shah, Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal, Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, Meesho CEO Vidit Aatrey, Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham, Urban Company CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal, and Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal.
According to Anandan, Surge prioritises two factors when selecting startups: the calibre of the founding team and their understanding of the problem they aim to solve. Also, it focuses on the market opportunity, which is also crucial for building large-scale businesses.
Surge companies have collectively raised over $2 billion in follow-on funding post the programme, and more than 75% of startups from the first five cohorts have secured series A rounds, Anandan noted.
“There has never been a better time to be starting up a company in India and to be an early-stage investor in India,” said Anandan.
