Sequoia Capital India has chosen 15 startups for Sequoia Spark Fellowship, a programme oriented for female founders in Southeast Asia and India.
The program’s first batch consists of 15 companies having 20 female founders from sectors like edtech, fintech, software as a service (SaaS), and cryptocurrency. The founders of these companies hail from India, Pakistan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Dubai.
The startups which are in their pre-launch or pre-product-market-fit stage will be entitled to a US$100,000 grant from Sequoia.
“They’ll take part in monthly mentorship sessions, have access to select Surge sessions, and receive hands-on support from Sequoia India portfolio specialists across hiring, legal, finance, product, technology, and marketing,” said the VC firm in a statement.
A senior Sequoia India investment adviser and a company founder from the firm’s portfolio will be assigned to each of the founders. The initiative is expected to last for around a year.
Here’s the list of 15 companies selected Sequoia Spark Fellowship:
- Airschool is a Singapore-based SaaS tool that makes it effortless for companies to launch their online course business, expand audience base and earn handsome revenue.
- Ascend Now is again a Singapore-based ed-tech platform that gives a comprehensive academic profile for college students.
- Early Steps Academy is a Bengaluru-headquartered platform that provides an e-learning experience to students for about 1,000 essential subjects like bioengineering, entrepreneurship, and cryptocurrency
- Findeed is a financial services platform with the main focus on working-class Indians.
- Finllect is a Dubai based startup that enables users to build credit scores, know about credit, and unlock better financial opportunities.
- Friz is a Singapore-based neo-bank having freelancers in South and Southeast Asia as a target group.
- Jify is a startup for Indian employees to instantly access, track, save and manage their pay.
- Linecraft AI is a SaaS platform that optimizes manufacturing lines.
- Loop Panel, is an Indian startup that helps translate customer conversation data into shareable, actionable insights.
- Milky Way AI is a startup that builds AI software earmarked for getting marketing insights for FMCG/CPG companies.
- Nume Crypto is a startup that makes cryptocurrency-based payment transactions easy to initiate and economical to process.
- Rowy is an open-source, low-code platform that enables developers to build prototypes in a visually and intuitively grand way.
- Sribuu is a personal finance management platform providing a complete view of finances for young Indonesian users.
- The Nestery is a one-stop solution for parenting and childcare products.
Application For the second session of Spark Fellowship will open in the April-June quarter of 2022.