Early-stage venture capital firm Peak XV’s seed platform Surge has seen its global footprint expand to markets such as Australia, China, the UK, and the US, according to a top company executive.
Peak XV’s managing director Rajan Anandan told Mint in an interview that the program, which started off with focus on India and Southeast Asia, has now expanded to support companies in other markets.
“We have a company building for China,” he said. “The firm’s thesis and ambition with Surge has remained the same. The objective is to bend the arc of early-stage founders so we can increase the odds that they’re going to build legendary companies.”
Launched in 2019 by Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Surge is a 16-week “founder’s academy” program for startup founders that takes them through the genesis of building and scaling a business.
Peak XV accepts applications to Surge on a rolling basis with two cohorts of 10-20 founding teams every year. The firm backs these companies with up to $3 million.
Apart from an expanding global presence, the ambitions and the way the Surge startups approach the market has changed. “In the first cohort of Surge, only 5% of companies were building for the world. Today, that percentage is more like 50-60%. More than half our cohorts are building for the world,” Anandan said.
The last two cohorts are indicative of the ongoing innovation across the startup ecosystem, Anandan said. “If you look at the ninth and 10th cohort of Surge, it’s a mirror of what’s happening in India’s startup ecosystem. There is innovation in every part of the Indian economy,” he said.
The latest cohort
Fourteen startups made up Surge’s Cohort 10. Of these, six have an artificial intelligence (AI) focus.
Aquan is building agentic AI workflows for finance industry professionals; Brainfish’s AI-powered platform focuses on changing customer experience; Clout Kitchen is digitising popular gaming personalities to build interactive experiences for gamers; Dubbing AI is building real-time voice changing software that allows people to sound like their favourite characters; OrbitShift is using its AI platform to accelerate sale for enterprise; Wobot is using its low-code platform to translate video data into actionable insights for enterprise, in real time.
The other companies part of the cohort include Amaani, which is building beauty and wellness brands in the Middle East; Ambak is trying to simplify the home loan industry for both customers and distributors; Dezy is democratising dental care by helping customers get a digital diagnosis over their smartphone; Parseable is making a high-performance logging system for cloud-native ecosystems; SalarySe is trying to change how India’s salaried employees manage their finances; TailCall’s API platform is boosting developer productivity; The Health Factory aims to transform India’s bread consumption. Additionally, there’s one stealth startup in the cohort which is working on specialty healthcare.
Anandan says the company has no plan to move away from its current design philosophy around Surge anytime soon. “There’s a reason we keep cohorts small. It’s because we want to give each company a lot of attention. Building a company is a very hard journey.”
The only changes he wants to make are minor. “I think one thing you can expect us to do is to become more offline going forward. It builds a lot more community. Additionally, today we have a 16-week program, we might shorten it.”
