On Tuesday, Sequoia (1) announced a new program called The Guild. It is a six-month program with a cohort of about 12 to 16 founders. They would meet twice a month to leverage their experience and learnings to new startups. Shailendra J Singh, MD of Sequoia Capital, announced the recent launch on a LinkedIn blog. The Sequoia Capital is launching the Guild in October 2020. The program aims to assist a growing startup in its portfolio to become a multi-billion-dollar-business.
Singh further added that The Guild is their new startup, co-created by some of the most influential and innovative founders in India and SEA. It is a step forward in Sequoia’s mission to help the daring startups to build a legendary company from concept to IPO and ahead.
Sequoia Aims to Increase the Growth of Early-stage startups.
At present, the venture capital firm has 43 startups on its portfolio in India and Southeast Asia. It includes Byju’s, OYO, Capillary Technologies, Gojek, Insider, and more. The yearly revenue of each startup is 50 million USD to over 1 billion USD.
Each cohort of The Guild would focus on the two sectors to which the founder belonged. It will begin with the consumer, internet, and mobile industry. The next two cohorts will have founders from fintech, B2B, SaaS, and other sectors. The fourth cohort of The Guild program will begin in November 2020. At the same time, the fifth cohort will come under operation in May 2021.
In January 2019, Sequoia had launched its 16-week in-house accelerator program, Surge. It focused on the startups of India and SEA. It also offered 1 to 2 million USD as part of its seed funding.
Blume Ventures had collaborated with BGV, Benhamou Global Ventures, a US-based venture firm, and Emergent Ventures in 2018. Together, they launched their own B2B startups’ accelerator named as Arka Venture Labs. Moreover, Kris Gopalkrishnan and SD Shibulal, Co-founders of Infosys, had launched Axilor Ventures, a Bengaluru-based venture fund to back and accelerate early-stage startups.
Author: Rucha Joshi
Source : https://timesnext.com/sequoia-launches-new-program/
Date : 2020-09-22T11:11:44.000Z