YC shrinks cohorts, sees less SEA, India investments

Y Combinator has been quite active in the development of the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia and India, but the recent numbers indicate a slowdown.

In the past two years, there has been a decline in the number of Southeast Asian and Indian startups participating in Y Combinator’s program, according to the firm’s startup directory, which lists publicly launched companies from its cohorts.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

The startup enabler holds its accelerator program twice a year: the Winter (W) edition runs from January to March, and the Summer (S) one takes place from June to August.

Cohort sizes have always fluctuated, but out of the 254 public participants in the latest batch (W23), there were only 14 startups from Southeast Asia and India.

In fact, this figure marked an over 4.5x decrease from the W22 group, which had 65 startups from the two regions. Overall, this cohort was also the largest in size, having 333 startups in total.

That said, Y Combinator had smaller cohorts in the recent past, but these batches had greater representation from India and Southeast Asia – an example being the 2020 groups.

The ratio of Southeast Asian and Indian startups to the total cohort size has also shrunk. These companies only made up 5.5% of W23, marking the lowest ratio since S18 – nine batches ago.

A spokesperson for the company tells Tech in Asia that batch sizes in general have decreased, and this was an “intentional” decision.

The person cited three reasons why the firm decided to reduce the startups it funded from W22 to S22: the economic downturn, its impact on the venture funding environment, and the return of in-person operations.

The California-headquartered accelerator has certainly felt the pinch of the macroeconomic environment.