Sequoia Capital hits road to raise second India seed fund

Sequoia Capital India has hit the road to raise its second seed-stage fund as it seeks to build on its focus to catch startups early that began with the launch of its accelerator and incubation programme called Surge programme two years back.

Sequoia Capital India Seed Fund II Ltd is incorporated in Mauritius, filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission show. 

Sequoia declined comment.

The firm intensified its focus on early-stage bets when it launched the Surge programme in January 2019. It also hired Google's Southeast Asia and India vice-president Rajan Anandan as a managing director in April the same year to focus on Surge.

The venture capital firm has invested in more than 130 startups in India including unicorns such as Ola, MuSigma and Zomato, though it was not an early investor in any, having come at the growth stage.

In 2019, Sequoia also floated its first country-focused seed fund and quickly marked its final close at around $200 million (Rs 1,400 crore).

A bulk of the fund was to be deployed into startups that were part of the Surge and the vehicle was also supposed to make investments in startups outside the programme.

The first fund was sector-agnostic in line with the larger investment strategy of Sequoia.

Last year, Sequoia received commitments worth $1.35 billion (about Rs 10,030 crore) across a venture fund and a growth fund.

This was the largest corpus that the Menlo Park-headquartered venture capital firm has raised for India and Southeast Asia.

In 2020, Sequoia continued to hold its pole position as the most active VC.