In addition to the USD 100K in grant, as a Spark founder, you will get access to one-on-one mentorship sessions with a dedicated Sequoia India investment team member as well as a founder. You will also be mentored by Sequoia India specialists across marketing, product, technology, hiring and more. To ensure that you can benefit and learn from Sequoia’s wider network, you will also get access to founder talks and deep-dive studio sessions that are part of the Spark program, as well as select Sequoia India events.

If selected for the program, you will spend structured 1:1 time with both your founder-mentor as well as the Sequoia investment advisor mentor to help you as you work on your product and business for the next 12 months. You will also work with Sequoia specialists across different disciplines from time to time.

You will also have access to select Surge and Sequoia talks that are meant for portfolio founders only.

This will be a one-year fellowship program that includes regular check-ins and hands-on mentoring as you continue to build your startup in parallel.

The applications for the fellowship are now open and will remain open until September 15th. The first cohort will start in November 2021.

In addition to the fellowship, we have a series of events for a wider audience –  Sequoia Spark Studios Sessions, Coffee Chats and Spark Talks segments will go live in August.

As part of the fellowship grant, Sequoia Capital India will not take a stake/ownership in the company. We do expect the selected founders to commit to spending time and attending the sessions to make the best of the program.

While each cohort is for 12 months, the Sequoia Spark community is for life. You can continue to stay connected to your Spark network, attend events and benefit from peer/community learnings after the fellowship ends.

You can apply for the Spark Fellowship program here. Applications close by 15 September, 2021.

We are looking for women founders who are leading pre-launch or recently-launched startups. You may be bootstrapped or raising a seed round. Spark is sector agnostic, but your startup should ideally have some kind of technology play.

The Spark program is specifically designed for pre-seed stage startups and focused on helping founders work towards their launch and Product-Market Fit. We would love to see a business plan and your product/service details and thinking around Go-To-Market, even if you are yet to launch.

We are only accepting applications from full-time founders, or those about to start up, at this point.

As of now, we are accepting applications from full-time founders only. However, if you can commit to running your startup full time by the time the cohort starts in November 2021, then you are welcome to apply.

Your application will be reviewed by a group of investment advisors. If shortlisted, we will set up a virtual meeting with you (the founder), your co-founders if any and members of the Sequoia India team. We will select our final 15 founders post the meetings.

Not right away. But if you are selected for the Sequoia Spark fellowship, your company will have to be registered in order to receive the grant.

You can apply if you are building for India and/or Southeast Asia markets. You are not required to be based out of these regions at present.

Yes, you definitely can. However, you need to be an equal (or majority) shareholder in the business. Please note that if selected, the program will only be open to you.

A single application is sufficient for the both of you since the form has provision to share details of your co-founder. Please go through the fields carefully and share all the relevant details of your co-founder.

You don’t need to have a co-founder to apply to Sequoia Spark. We hope that you will get to meet like-minded people through the Spark community so that you can learn and grow together.

Sequoia Spark does not charge any program fees. Given this is a grant, we don’t take any ownership/stake in the company either.