New Delhi: Surge, the accelerator and incubation program launched by Sequoia Capital, will increase its seed funding round ticket size to $3 million from the current $1-2 million.
Sequoia said increasing the ticket size requires early-stage founders to fit the runway and product-market and build a stronger team before scaling the Series A, which helped Surge turn its attention to early-stage investments in 2019. was launched to focus. , in a blog.
“This is important in any market cycle, and even more so at a time when investors are becoming more cautious and follow-on rounds may take longer to close,” it added.
Notably, Surge will also remove the minimum $1 million floor to make it more relevant to a larger pool of founders and investments as low as $300,000-500,000.
“We have also met a number of pre-launch founders over the years who are still thinking about their product and would like a short round to manage dilution – which becomes even more important in a downmarket ,” it explained. Since 2019, Surge has launched six clusters and over 20% of selected startups were pre-seed when it partnered with them.
This change in ticket size will apply to its eight groups that will be launched next year.
The Surge program has partnered with 112 startups, including 64 from India and 45 from Southeast Asia, in its six clusters. These startups have raised over $1.5 billion in total in the follow-on round, the blog said.
Sequoia Capital sharpened its focus on early-stage bets when it launched the surge program in January 2019. It also appointed Rajan Anandan, Google’s vice president of Southeast Asia and India, as managing director in April 2019 to focus on Surge.
The Menlo Park-headquartered venture firm has invested in over 130 startups in India, including unicorns like Ola, MuSigma and Zomato, though it was not an early investor in any of them.
Last year, Sequoia Capital India also marked the final closing of its second seed fund, as the venture capital firm continued to deepen its focus on investing in early-stage startups.
Earlier this month, Sequoia Capital raised $2.85 billion ( 22,240 crore) in a set of funds to continue financing entrepreneurs to invest in Southeast Asia and India.
Sequoia Capital’s record funding comes at a time when the startup ecosystem is going through a funding crunch along with improving valuations after a busy dealmaking activity in 2021.
Notably, the fund closure was delayed as the VC firm was embroiled in alleged financial irregularities and corporate misrule at some of its portfolio firms such as BharatPe, Trail and Zilingo.