You get the brief, and the target audience line reads something like “marketing professionals.” That’s it. So you guess at the tone, pick a reasonable angle, and hope it lands.

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.

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next.You can read more from the series here.

Thousands of applications. Multiple rounds of review. Hundreds of hours spent evaluating startups from around the world. Now comes the part everyone has been waiting for.