Y Combinator, the famed Silicon Valley startup accelerator has chosen a record 15 startups from India for its summer batch of 2019.
Typically, Y Combinator picks four-five startups from India for each of its summer and winter batches. Hence, the latest selection underlines a pickup in the early stage startup ecosystem.
Till now, Y Combinator has backed 40 startups from India since 2014. The firm had selected four startups for the recently concluded batch.
Launched in 2005, Y Combinator is based out of US which provides seed funding for startups. It pays expenses for startups while they get themselves ready for the initial stage.
Also, it has been behind startups like accommodation sharing platform Airbnb and payments platform Stripe.
“We believe there are many massive $10-billion+ companies to be built for India. A key factor in what will make the next ‘Silicon Valley’ will be founders who made it big, and then who give back by investing in the newer generation of founders. I now see the very beginning of this happening in India,” Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung told ET.
“There was a 50% increase in applications from India. Part of it was because we announced interviews in Bengaluru. The other part was because of YC Startup School a 10-week online free course on how to start a startup. We will be repeating both,” added Cheung.
What might be driving further interest of Y Combinator in India could also be the success of some of the early companies it had backed, including online tax-filing platform Cleartax, social commerce platform Meesho and payment gateway Razorpay, which is raising a new round of funding at a valuation of over $400 million.