Sequoia India, SEA announces second cohort of Spark Fellowship
Sequoia Spark works to inspire more women in India and Southeast Asia to become entrepreneurs.
With an aim to inspire more women in India and Southeast Asia to become entrepreneurs, Sequoia India and Southeast Asia have launched the second cohort of the Sequoia Spark Fellowship, a $100,000 equity-free grant and mentorship programme.
Sequoia Spark is a year-long programme combining capital and deep, immersive mentorship designed for more women in India and Southeast Asia to become entrepreneurs.
The founders have each been matched to a seasoned startup founder from Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s portfolio for one-on-one mentorship for the duration of the programme. It includes Anshuman Singh of , Ashwini Asokan of , Chaitanya Ramalingegowda of , Hande Cilingir of , Siu Rui of Carousell, and Yamini Bhat of , among others.
In addition, a senior Sequoia India and Southeast Asia investment advisor will also mentor them for the duration of the programme. Spark 02 founders will also have access to select Surge sessions and get mentorship from Sequoia India and Southeast Asia portfolio specialists across hiring, product, legal, finance, product, technology, and marketing.
Spark 02 comprises 12 ambitious female founders tackling a diverse range of problems across sectors and industries like climate tech, healthtech, SaaS, B2B, Web3, consumer internet, and D2C.
Eight of the 12 founders from Spark 02 are from India and four are from Southeast Asia.
Sequoia Spark 02
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Spark 01 cohort ended in December 2022, with 10 of the 15 startups raising their seed and Series A rounds while one was recently acquired. The company confirmed a total of $51 million of capital was invested post-Spark.
“We are thrilled about the success of the first cohort and incredibly excited about the potential of the Spark 02 founders," said Sakshi Chopra, MD, Sequoia India. "The Sequoia Spark fellowship programme is born out of the desire and commitment to increase the number of female founders in the region and play a role in enabling the early stages of their journey, especially when access is such a challenge.”
Here are the 12 startups part of Spark 02—the second cohort of the Sequoia Spark fellowship programme.
Avataar—Founded in 2022 by Saumya Avataar, the platform provides at-home, full-spectrum, tech-enabled, innovative, and non-invasive skin treatments with undeniable results for both men and women.
BHyve—Founded in 2021 by Ketaki Ogale, BHyve is building intelligent knowledge-sharing networks—knowledge management systems for the future of work—to empower employees to connect, learn and grow while becoming more productive.
Hoop—Hoop is a health and wellness startup founded last year by Twinkle Uppal aimed to cater to young Indians.
Jollee—Akriti Gupta founded Jollee in 2022 as a personalised shopping companion for children’s needs that provides parents with targeted recommendations on what's best for their child.
Mantys—Founded in 2022 by Kriti Arora, Mantys is a business planning and analytics solution for mid-market companies. The SaaS platform helps companies to get and track all their data—financial and business metrics—in one place and in real-time.
Plodo—Plodo is a platform that helps digital-first consumer brands launch offline operations in India. Founded in 2022 by Eisha Srivastava, it creates a distribution platform that independent brands can plug into and get instant access to offline retail channels.
Teleport—Founded in 2022 by Nikita Dresswala, Teleport is a travel-tech startup that aims to make travel visa applications simple and fast by simplifying paperwork requirements, providing reliable information, and providing a customer-friendly platform to apply.
Zerocircle - Founded in 2022 by Neha Jain, Zerocircle helps conscious brands across industries adopt low carbon materials that are made out of regenerative resources like seaweed
Ailiverse—Ailiverse is a SaaS startup that makes deep learning accessible for all enterprises. Founded in 2022 by Fannie Lin, it uses its proprietary technology in unsupervised domain adaptation and enables companies to build computer vision models with only 10% of the traditionally required data.
Fairatmos—Fairatmos is an aggregator of carbon offsetting projects in Indonesia. Founded in 2022 by Natalia Rialucky Marsudi, its aim is to build a climate-tech impact enterprise—the largest carbon credit marketplace and technology provider that delivers high-quality projects.
Gigit.ai—Founded in 2022 by Inez Wihardjo, Gigit.ai is a Web3 startup for gig economy workers in Southeast Asia. The goal is to help democratise the gig economy. It is a two-sided marketplace with AI enterprises, which need data to be labelled and collected on one side, and workers who can use a mobile-first solution to fulfil this need on the other side.
Little Joy—Founded in 2021 by Carina Lukito, Little Joy is a mom-and-baby commerce startup and a digital-first ecosystem focusing on the first 1,000 days of children's development (the most essential period in human development to avoid malnutrition).
Edited by Kanishk Singh
