Peak XV ups Surge seed investment ceiling to $5M, unveils 18-startup cohort

Peak XV Partners, one of the largest venture capital firms investing in markets including India and Southeast Asia with more than $10 billion in assets under management, has increased how much it invests per startup through Surge, its seed-stage investing platform, as it unveils a new cohort of 18 companies. At least three of the companies in this cohort had already raised outside funding, in some cases from Peak XV itself, before joining Surge.

The new batch, called Surge 12, is the first to operate under Peak XV’s higher investment ceiling of up to $5 million per company, up from $3 million previously. The venture firm invested more than $50 million across the cohort, which has collectively raised over $90 million in seed funding, according to Peak XV. Its median investment per company has also increased, though the firm declined to disclose the figure. “The bar to raise a Series A has gone up pretty significantly,” Rajan Anandan (pictured above), managing director at Peak XV, said in an interview.

He added that the firm is also seeing more capital-intensive companies,…