Sequoia India and Southeast Asia has launched a brand new program to assist its portfolio’s early-stage creators get connected with global companies that can assist companies expand into emerging markets. The venture company stated, as it rapidly expands its offerings in major regions.
Alongside giving founders advice as well as connections and assistance as well as connections and advice, the operators will invest in startups through the program, which is known as Pathfinders the long-running venture firm announced. The launch of the program is at a time that increasing numbers of Indian startups, particularly in the SaaS sector expanding to countries like U.S., the UK, Europe and other international markets. Startups like Byju’s, Freshworks, Chargebee and Clevertap currently count U.S. and Europe as the top markets for them.
The program will be open to a large portion of the portfolio of venture firms however Sequoia anticipates that startups in the early stages -that are in the seed and Series A stages benefit from it according to Harshjit Sethi who is the managing director of Sequoia India during an interview.
“What we find in the series A and seed stage are companies looking to expand into the U.S. They immediately begin to sift through to identify their initial customers for the market, and whom to recruit. They have logos that are strong in India however some of the brands aren’t well-known by America. U.S.,” he stated.
Pathfinders will have the bidirectional feedback system which means that either stakeholder can voice their ideas to the other, he added.
The company has has launched an $2.85 billion fund to India as well as Southeast Asia earlier this year, stumbled upon the concept of Pathfinders during an Zoom call in 2020 when discussing ways to offer more support to businesses seeking to expand beyond the United States.
“We are determined to help our companies improve and become the top in the world. We have extremely smart founders who have deep domain knowledge. However, when they begin to develop for markets they’re not interested in, we think that it’s not an even field. That’s the reason we came up with Pathfinders,” said Sethi and added that the having the right team of operators will give years of knowledge for companies.
More than two dozen operators have joined Pathfinders. This includes Amit Singh (president of Palo Alto Networks), Oliver Jay (ex CRO of Asana), Param Kahlon (CPO at UiPath), Prasanna Sankar (co-founder of Rippling), Pratyus Patnaik (senior director of Engineering at Okta) and Sandeep Johri (former CEO of Tricentis).
“The entire market for enterprise software is being impacted by new generation SaaS designed with cloud technology, AI and mobile first design concepts. To be successful, Indian disruptors need to comprehend western customers, their requirements and customers’ expectations. They must also create products that meet their needs efficiently. Pathfinders connects entrepreneurs with skilled operating companies from these countries who have built knowledge over time of knowing the western buyer,” said Palo Alto Networks’ Singh in a statement.
Pathfinders is the latest in Sequoia’s efforts to increase its value for startups. Sequoia Capital has also introduced Arc which operates located in London as well as the U.S. to find and help mentor startups at the beginning of their journey, supplying each startup with one million dollars. The way of working of Sequoia the largest venture capitalist firm, is distinct from its competitors that typically have a hands-off approach, handing out the cash but not actively helping startups take on their own journey.
