Surge, Sequoia Capital India's accelerator program, has announced its eighth cohort of 12 early-stage start-ups from India and Southeast Asia. The 16-week program offers support and guidance for start-ups to scale up and each of the 30 founders will receive between $1 million to $2 million in capital from Sequoia, as well as co-investments from other investors. 

Surge now comprises over 300 founders and more than 130 start-ups across 16 sectors. The latest cohort features founders from a range of sectors, including climate tech, artificial intelligence, metaverse, digital health and e-commerce. Half of the Surge 08 start-ups have at least one female founder, with two medical doctors from Indonesia and an AI and natural language processing Ph.D. holder focused on AI in healthcare.

Surge 08 includes two health tech companies, two climate-tech companies, a metaverse gaming platform, an AI company working with NASA, as well as three consumer companies that are building new-age brands in the home decor, food and wedding sectors. The start-ups have collectively raised more than $2 billion in follow-on funding from Surge and co-investors. Many founders are building for global markets from day one and half of the start-ups in Surge 08 are looking to expand into the US, Europe and Canada.

"These diverse set of founders each bring with them unique experiences and expertise to create ambitious and differentiated products and platforms to the problems they are tackling and we are excited to be a part of their early company-building journeys," said Rajan Anandan, managing director at Sequoia India and Southeast Asia and Surge.

The selected start-ups include Arintra, an AI-powered autonomous medical coding platform, AltWorld, a metaverse gaming platform, Bitfrost, a metaverse product, MasterChow, a direct-to-consumer brand backed by Anicut Capital and Vaaree, a home products brand backed by Avana Capital founder Anjali Bansal.