Sequoia picks 37 founders, 15 startups for Surge 7; US lawmaker pushing EV industry to kill dependence on China

Sequoia Capital, yesterday, named the next batch of its accelerator programme Surge, in India and Southeast Asia, picking entrepreneurs who are finding opportunities in tackling a range of problems from climate change and agritech to Web3. Many of the founders are women, and several have rich prior experience in their sectors – from finance to aerospace. Some have started straight out of college as well. Notes: Sequoia Capital, yesterday, named 37 entrepreneurs from 15 startups for the seventh batch of its accelerator programme Surge, in India and Southeast Asia. These founders include those who are tackling climate change with the first AI-powered decarbonisation platform in the Asia Pacific; helping people with no design experience create 3D animation anywhere in the world; allowing startups to build machine learning projects in minutes and days versus months; facilitating one-click checkouts in SEA; building Indonesia’s first fintech company for teenagers; building a full-stack agritech venture, also in Indonesia; and helping developers tap Web3, the venture capital firm said in a post on its website. A third of the startups in this batch have at least one woman among their founders. The startups are, Attentive, Beam, Boxs, BuyerAssist, ClearFeed, Gan, Hatica, Metaschool, Pixcap, Pratech Brands, Semaai, TrueFoundry, Unravel Carbon, Whiz and one venture in stealth mode. US Senator Joe Manchin, an influential lawmaker in America, is pushing the country’s auto companies to kill their dependence on Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries, as the world moves towards electric vehicles, Bloomberg reported on Aug. 19. Manchin, who was originally opposed to a $7500 tax credit on EVs, changed his mind to support it and gave a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to the industry that finally pushed through an agreement on greater local sourcing of components, according to Bloomberg. The agreement – seen as a win for US President Joe Biden’s climate agenda – allows US carmakers to continue offering $7,500 in tax credits for the purchase of new “clean cars” with some conditions, according to Bloomberg: the cars will need to be built with minerals that are extracted or processed in a country with which the US has a free trade agreement, and have a battery that includes a large percentage of components that were manufactured or assembled in North America. India’s minister for science Jitendra Singh, yesterday, announced 75 grants to encourage collaboration between biotech startups, industry, academia and research institutions, according to a government press statement. The grants, named ‘Amrit’ (nectar in Hindi) will be administered by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, part of the government’s Department of Biotechnology. Each grant will offer Rs. 10-15 crore for inter-disciplinary, multi-institutional work to support high-risk, ambitious research ideas, and milestones-driven collaborative research in all domain-specific areas of the biotech sector, according to the statement. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds