• The Spark fellowship program is for women entrepreneurs in India and Southeast Asia.
• The year-long program is aimed at bringing more gender diversity and supporting startups led by women.

Sequoia Capital has recently revealed the launch of a year-long program, Sequoia Spark, that integrates capital and immersive mentorship specially designed to encourage more women across India as well as Southeast Asia to establish their businesses.

The Sequoia Spark Fellowship will offer USD 100,000 to 15 early-stage startups led by women. Applications for these are now open and the cohort will begin in November 2021. It will provide 1:1 mentorship for one year from a group consisting of Sequoia specialists and Sequoia India investment advisors across India and South East Asia.

It will also provide a series of discussions in Spark Talks with global women leaders and Spark Studios which will be open for women founders across the region.

The program has drafted around 20 hours of virtual informal chats every month, totaling 250 hours every year, on big-time business issues with the team of Sequoia investment advisory, which will be open to women founders who are not part of the company’s portfolio.

The company stated that its goal is to inspire and promote more women to establish companies, to encourage and assist more women to lead and build for the future, and this fellowship is a small step in that direction.

As cited by notable resources, as of 2020, only 12% of venture capital-funded startups in India and 20% of the startups in ASEAN have one female founder.

As it continues to focus on bringing more women to the startup world, last year, the company surveyed more than 200 women founders across India and SEA to understand their biggest challenges in terms of company building.

Moreover, Spark had its roots in a woman founder-centric office-hours offering before 2020.

Source Credits:

https://yourstory.com/herstory/2021/07/sequoia-india-launches-spark-fellowship-expanded-programmes/amp