Sequoia’s new Spark cohort spotlights 12 female founders

Sequoia Southeast Asia and India has kicked off the second cohort of its Spark Fellowship, which provides a US$100,000 equity-free grant and mentorship to female founders.

Photo credit: Sequoia

The investment major said the participating group includes 12 entrepreneurs in industries such as climate tech, healthtech, SaaS, B2B, Web3, consumer internet, and direct-to-consumer commerce. Four out of the 12 founders hail from Southeast Asia while the remaining are India-based, according to a statement.

As part of the program, the participants were matched with founders in Sequoia’s portfolio. These include Hande Cilingir of Insider, Julian Artopé of Zenyum, and Siu Rui of Carousell.

See also: Sequoia-backed StashAway’s revenue grows 2.5x, but losses widen

Here are the second cohort’s participants and their startups:

Ailiverse

Founder: Fannie Lin

Based in Singapore, the software-as-a-service startup allows companies to build computer vision models with only 10% of the traditionally required data.

Fairatmos

Founder: Natalia Rialucky Marsudi

The Indonesian firm aims to democratize access to carbon markets.

Gigit.ai

Founder: Inez Wihardjo