Meet Surge! They're Sequoia's accelerator program for Southeast Asian and Indian startups, and they've just announced the 12 startups part of their eighth cohort. This time, it includes four Southeast Asian startups!

• Launched in 2019, Surge's community of startups includes 300+ founders of 130+ startups across 16+ industries that have raised a total of over $2B in follow-on funding.

‍

🙋🏻‍♂️🙋🏻‍♀️ Say hi to them!

🇮🇩 Diri Care. They're an on-demand digital clinic for skin, hair and intimate health conditions — offering people easy access to affordable and high-quality care.

• Quickly get assessed by certified physicians online, receive personalized treatment prescriptions and have clinically proven products delivered straight to your home in a matter of hours.
• They raised a $4.3M pre-seed co-led by East Ventures and Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia's Surge.

🇮🇩 Tentang Anak. They're Indonesia's fastest-growing parenting ecosystem. On the platform, they curate quality, scientifically-backed products, services and advice for children's development.

• Co-investors include Goodwater Capital, Insignia Venture Partners, Paragon and Venturra, with regulatory filings estimating that they raised a $4.2M seed.
• They have free resources like consultations, growth trackers and nutritional guides but also sell products in-app and on their marketplace.

🇸🇬 Bifrost. They allow teams to generate reliable, diverse, customizable and rare datasets through synthetic, computer-generated data!

This is extra useful for AI teams training AI models for gaming, the metaverse, mobility, space AR/VR, robotics, space and defense — even NASA has used it. 

• Co-investors include Wavemaker. 
• It's already tough to find high-quality labeled training data at scale — but it's even tougher for the industries above, which slows down the development of ML systems.
• It only takes days or less on Bifrost. Forget the usual way of needing years, huge teams, millions of dollars and a lot of infrastructure to collect real datasets from the physical world!

🇸🇬 Calyx Global. They help businesses choose better and more impactful carbon credits by rating carbon credits strictly and independently. Plus, they have other add-on services that allow these businesses to get expert insights on carbon credit projects and more.

• Co-investors include Goose Capital, New Climate Ventures, Susquehanna and Time Zero Capital.
• It's hard to know which carbon credits actually make an impact. This means businesses that buy bad carbon credits accidentally risk wasting money or ruining their reputation.

‍