New Delhi, Feb 26 (IANS): Leading investment firm Peak XV on Monday announced the latest cohort of its Spark fellowship for female founders, with 14 companies and 16 female founders.

The Spark fellowship is a four-month long programme that includes a $100K equity-free grant. It is open to all female founders who are in the early stages of starting up.

"Out of the many applications we received for this cohort of Spark, these 16 founders really impressed us with their ambition, first principles thinking and rich operating experience. Many of them are second-time founders," Sakshi Chopra, Managing Director, Peak XV, said in a statement.

This cohort includes four companies building AI solutions in travel, fraud detection, wholesale trade and e-commerce. Another four are focused on Healthcare, and the remaining companies are building SaaS, B2B, and consumer businesses, the company said.

Moreover, the company mentioned that under this programme, founders will get access to domain knowledge, mentorship, a curated community of female founders and exclusive events. Each startup will also receive over $1M in perks from other companies from cloud credits to devtools, analytics and much more.

Spark’s curated community of startups now includes three cohorts, 48 founders and 41 startups across 10+ sectors in less than three years.