Summit Series by Elevation: Recent Episodes

Elevation Capital

Join the folks at Elevation Capital as they speak to category-defining founders, seasoned industry leaders, and trailblazers to bring you their stories.

🍕🍔 New SummitUp episode!

India’s QSR market has been on a tear. 450-500 new stores are being added in this space each year.

However, it still remains massively underpenetrated. Changing consumer habits and rising discretionary expenditure are expected to make QSRs one of the biggest spend pools in the years to come.

So what will it take for a new QSR brand to win in this market?

In this meaty episode, Chirag Chadha and Vaibhav Chowdhury from our consumer brands practice join Vishy V to decode the secret sauce for building a large, profitable QSR brand in India. Among other things, the conversation digs into:

Why QSRs can become VC-fundable businesses
Getting the right throughput per store by optimizing menu, pricing, etc, as the first step to find early PMF
Figuring out unit economics and the 'box model' to enable rapid scaling
Key ingredients for building a strong moat
Is the rise of food delivery a boon or bane for QSRs?

At Elevation, we’ve been tracking & investing in the sector for over 10 years and have had the privilege of partnering with brands like Chaayos (Nitin and Raghav), which has grown to become India’s most loved and largest tea café chain. If you are building in QSR, we would love to speak with you.

🔊New Day One podcast episode alert! 🎙️

"I always joke with my friends that I did an MBA in sneakers"

Utkarsh Gupta says this with a laugh, but there's more truth to it than you might think. From spending hours at malls observing sneaker shoppers to striking up conversations with strangers at airports, Utkarsh and his fellow co-founder Dishant Daryani left no stone unturned in their quest to crack the code of the Indian sneaker market.

This is the story of how two ex-consultants returned to India from the US to build Comet - a brand that embodies their passion for sneakers. In this fascinating conversation with Chirag Chadha and Vaibhav Chowdhury, the founders take us through their journey of building an aspirational lifestyle brand that resonates with India's fashion-forward youth.

They discuss how their bold design choices and staying obsessed with the details make Comet truly stand out in the market. In this episode, you will learn about:

Identifying the whitespace in India's sneaker market
Balancing aspiration and value in pricing
Choosing focus over variety in the early days
Building a hospitality-first culture
Creativity as the X factor in building a new-age brand

🎮 New SummitUp podcast episode!

Mayank Khanduja and Kshitij Jayakrishnan dissect the key trends and opportunities that will shape the future of gaming in India with Vishy in the latest episode of SummitUp.

From the cultural significance of gaming to the drivers of explosive audience growth and emerging themes for builders, this episode unpacks the massive potential of India’s gaming ecosystem.

In this episode, Vaas Bhaskar (Principal, Elevation) and Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President, Elevation) from our fintech practice join Vishy V (Head of Marketing, Elevation) to dive deep into the massive vertical fintech opportunity in India.

They discuss why the time is ripe for a new wave of fintech innovation focused on serving the unique needs of specific customer segments. The conversation explores some exciting billion-dollar-plus opportunities across segments like schools, international students, tech workforce, and more.
Stay tuned for future episodes as we continue to unpack high-potential themes that will unlock $400 billion of value creation in fintech over the next decade!

Discover more insights from Elevation's fintech practice at The Bottomline - https://bottomline.elevationcapital.com/

🚀 New SummitUp podcast episode!

In the fifth episode of SummitUp, Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital) join Viswanathan V. (Head of Marketing, Elevation Capital) to discuss the massive opportunity in reimagining the travel industry for a new generation of travelers.

They explore how rising affluence, changing demographics, flexibility at work, and a shift to experiences are fueling innovation across the travel stack. The episode unpacks Elevation's thesis on the four key layers ripe for disruption: Inspiration, Planning, Booking, and Immersion.

Chapters:00:00 Coming up01:00 Intro01:57 Rising affluence & changing demographics05:57 Flexibility of work-life boundaries08:21 Spaces within the travel stack12:11 Corporate travel12:49 Inspiration: From discovery to serendipity18:11 Planning: AI meets the guidebook22:27 Booking: The rise of vertical plays29:27 Immersion: Curated experiences at scale33:57 Closing thoughts

In the latest episode of SummitUp, Vaas Bhaskar (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President, Elevation Capital) from our fintech practice join Viswanathan V. (Head of Marketing, Elevation Capital) to discuss the incredible growth of India’s fintech ecosystem and the $400 billion value creation potential in this decade.
They explore how India became a trailblazer in fintech and the key drivers fuelling transformation in financial services. The episode dives into some exciting themes where we are actively looking for founders building innovative solutions.

In future episodes, we will be double clicking on some of the themes that will unlock this value creation. Stay tuned!
Dive deeper into these themes and discover more thought-provoking perspectives from our fintech practice at The Bottomline - https://bottomline.elevationcapital.com/

Third episode in SummitUp podcast seriesWe're thrilled to launch the third episode in our SummitUp podcast series, where we explore opportunities in India’s burgeoning spacetech sector.

Join Vishy V (Head of Marketing, Elevation) as he converses with Akarsh (Principal, Elevation) and Manish (VP, Elevation) on the seismic shifts underway in India’s space economy and untapped opportunity areas where founders can drive disproportionate value creation.

The episode/they also give a glimpse of other spaces within the broader frontier tech landscape that we at Elevation are excited about.

Related reading: Elevation’s Frontier Tech practice has detailed our thesis on the India spacetech opportunity in this deck - https://elevationcapital.com/summit/insights/Escape-Velocity

There is a saying within Solar Square that customer service is not a department but the entire company. This philosophy, ingrained in its DNA, is made evident by the fact that over one-third of its monthly orders come in through word-of-mouth referrals.

Solar Square pivoted from being a bootstrapped B2B solar company to a full-stack residential brand when founders Neeraj Jain, Shreya Mishra and Nikhil Nahar believed it was the perfect moment to go after a $50 billion opportunity. Three years into the pivot, Solar Square has helped more than 10,000 homes and 100 housing societies switch to solar and is today India’s leading residential solar company.

In this conversation with Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital), Shreya and Neeraj speak about creating a new market, addressing the trust gap in the residential solar segment, and accelerating the transition to clean energy, one rooftop at a time.

In this episode, you will gain insights on:

Pivoting from B2B and identifying the residential opportunity
Going full-stack vs conventional asset-light marketplace model
Trust markers in residential solar
Being brutally honest about PMF
Scaling an operationally-intensive business

We are excited to bring you an insightful conversation between Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital) and Ankit Agarwal & Varun Limaye (Co-founders, Mesa School of Business), who are building India’s first startup-focused B-school to create entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.

Ankit and Varun observed that companies across India’s startup and tech ecosystem were finding it difficult to hire talent with market-relevant skills and hands-on experience in business building, especially for business and leadership roles.

Having worked in business functions across leading tech companies like Urban Company and Amazon, they understood the future needs of this growing sector and set out to deliver industry-relevant outcome-focused business education for professionals aiming to build a career in the tech ecosystem.

The Harvard and Kellogg alumni discuss their first principles approach to reimagining every aspect of a higher education institution bottom-up and how they constructed a unique curriculum by involving the startup ecosystem.

In this episode, you will gain insights on:

Why Ankit and Varun zeroed in on higher-ed
Closing the skills gap for business roles
Offline, full-time program as a design choice
Immersive startup-focused program structure and faculty
How they built the founding batch

Mesa’s first 12-month in-person program with 60 handpicked students is currently underway, and applications for its 2025 cohort are now open. Apply here: https://mesaschool.co/

"Can we be the happiness and wellness reinforcement provider to an entire nation?"

That's the bold vision Prashant Sachan is bringing to life with AppsForBharat. He passionately believes in building a foundation of trust, especially critical in the devotion space, ensuring that every aspect of AppsForBharat enriches, rather than exploits, the spiritual journeys of its users.

This thoughtful approach to product building underpins the culture of AppsForBharat, which today has more than 3 million people turning to its Sri Mandir app to fulfill their spiritual and devotional needs every month. Prashant advises that if a product isn't receiving sharp user love, it's crucial to keep iterating and changing until it does — a philosophy evidenced by the unparalleled customer love for Sri Mandir.

We are delighted to bring you an illuminating conversation between Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Prashant, where they deep dive into the early days of AppsForBharat. They discuss the acute need to provide reliable digital resources and access to services to enable devotion as a behaviour to move online.

In this episode, you will gain insights on:

Market gap that sparked the idea for AFB
How Prashant’s personal experiences influenced the company’s mission
Serving different user personas in the devotion space
First signs of PMF
Journey to monetization
When should founders raise capital

Chapters:00:00 Coming Up.01:00 Intro.02:00 How did AppsForBharat start?05:41 What does a typical Indian family look like?06:30 I started exploring devotion.07:32 AppsForBharat's daily impact in life.08:08 User personas for AppsForBharat.10:44 Sri Mandir: Enabler for devotion.12:50 30% of users are small business owners.14:34 What was the scope of opportunity for AFB?19:18 Roughly 300M people pray daily.20:28 Elevation Capital's AFB partnership decision.24:58 First principles partnership approach by Elevation.26:30 Figuring out the engagement loops.27:14 What were the signs of early PMF?31:20 User reviews matter.33:14 How did AFB acquire its first set of users?34:34 Scaling Strategy: Second phase approach.37:08 Prashant's user-centric cultural approach.39:36 Team building & culture at work.43:42 People find their purpose eventually.45:46 Roughly 3M people use the app every month.48:10 Evolution of AppsForBharat's DNA.50:22 Revenue and monetization metrics.52:52 Learnings & takeaways for budding entrepreneurs.58:54 How to approach the capital journey?

We're excited to welcome Ankit Garg and Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, the founders of Wakefit, to the Elevation family. In this special conversation with Chirag Chadha (Principal, Elevation), they explore the company's journey from its roots in the online mattress space to becoming a leading name in home and sleep solutions in India.

Chaitanya and Ankit state that everything they have built to date is centered around listening to consumers, and not being able to do that is what scares them the most. Wakefit currently operates at a revenue scale upwards of ₹1,000 crore and is on the path to becoming profitable in FY24.

Wakefit’s differentiated and full-stack approach on the backend allows it to consistently deliver high-quality and value-for-money products. It is taking its winning online formula from mattresses and successfully replicating it in the furniture category. Today, Wakefit runs India’s largest furniture factory.

Join us in this episode, where you will gain insights on:

What makes a D2C company
How advertising alone does not make a brand
Fostering a culture of frugality
Expansion beyond mattresses
Controlling every aspect of the supply chain
Wakefit’s omnichannel approach

In the second episode of our new series, SummitUp by Elevation, Vishy V (Head of Marketing, Elevation) discusses the unique trends in the Indian real estate industry and the potential for significant disruption in the proptech space with Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation) and Manish Advani (VP, Elevation).

They touch upon some of the most prevalent pain points experienced today by buyers, homeowners, tenants, and investors that have given rise to emerging value pools that founders can tap into.

0:00 - Coming Up.01:03 - Intro.02:22 - Why is real estate a challenging sector for technological disruption?07:07 - How can technology improve the home-buying experience?07:27 - Lack of transparency in the home-buying journey: Leading to the iBuying opportunity.10:21 - Enhancement of construction processes due to low NPS ratings.12:52 - Consumer experience is being redefined every 2-5 years.15:23 - Broken rental market: Opportunity to create a better home rental experience.16:02 - What should consumers expect in terms of a superior rental experience?20:24 - Are vacation homes emerging as the go-to asset class for young real estate investors?24:26 - Fractional ownership in regards to vacation homes.

🚀 New podcast series alert!We are excited to announce SummitUp, a fresh new series from Elevation where we discuss emerging themes and spaces in India’s startup ecosystem that we are deeply excited about and our thesis about how we see these opportunities shaping up over the coming years.In each episode, Vishy V (Head of Marketing, Elevation) will be joined by the members of our investment teams who will break down the dynamics of big ideas and trends across sectors and provide insights that are actionable for founders and aspiring builders.In the inaugural episode of SummitUp, we dive deep into the world of online marketplaces, a theme we’ve been deeply involved with since its earliest days in India. Amit Agarwal (Principal, Elevation) and Manish Advani (VP, Elevation) talk about our framework for identifying and creating bold and disruptive new marketplaces in India going forward. Through compelling case studies, they distill key insights from our observations of successful platform businesses globally and explore forward-looking themes in this space in India.---------------------------------------------------------------------------00:00 - Coming up 00:58 - Intro02:26 - What are marketplaces?05:43 - India's Consumer Story09:27 - Our Marketplace Framework09:45 - Unique Supply14:26 - New Target Audience18:28 - Better Experience & Unique GTM24:25 - Forward-looking Themes26:48 - Pets28:00 - Home & Home Decor29:13 - Sports & Nutrition29:55 - PropTech32:00 - Grocery__________________________________________________________Our SocialsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevationcap/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevationcap/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElevCap_______________________________________________________________________About UsEarly-stage venture capital firm. Proud partners of visionary founders. Never too early to get in touch with us.Above. Beyond. Together.

In this episode, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) sits down with Mohak Nahta (Founder, Atlys) to dissect the journey of building Atlys, the only ‘On Time’ visa provider for Indians. Atlys breaks visa applications down to their most fundamental, easy-to-understand elements.

The intricate visa application process remains a significant pain point, especially in countries like India, where passport strength often poses challenges. Dated embassy websites, reliance on agents and the often hefty commissions add layers of complexity for millions of travelers, making the whole visa process an anxiety-ridden experience. Enter Atlys. Having personally grappled with the perplexities of immigration and visa systems, Mohak feels a deep connection with Atlys and is committed to transforming the travel experience.

Initially positioned as a B2C solution for the US market, it saw organic adoption among Indian expats who then started recommending the product to their friends and family in India. The platform soon turned its sights towards catering to countries with weaker passports, starting with India. With its user-centric approach, Atlys simplified the convoluted visa application process into a streamlined, easy-to-follow procedure. Through innovations like auto-populated information from passport scans, integration with official portals, and elimination of redundant questions, the platform manages to make visa applications a breeze to complete in a matter of minutes.

Atlys has grown its GMV 8x in the last eight months and went from working with 1 agent to 2000+ agents for its B2B product since inception. The episode delves deep into the inception and mission of the platform, Atlys' journey from its US origins to its focus on India, the tech stack powering the automation of the visa application lifecycle, value proposition of the product, early signs of PMF, equipping travel agents with Atlys’ B2B solution, challenges faced, and advice for emerging entrepreneurs on the importance of selecting the right investment partners.

For our listeners, if you’re seeking a hassle-free visa application experience, Atlys is your go-to solution. If you're an entrepreneur with a groundbreaking idea, write to us at dayone@elevationcapital.com.

In this episode, you will gain insights on:

Atlys' US origins to its focus on India
Tech stack powering automation of visa applications
Early signs of PMF
Equipping travel agents with a B2B solution
Elevation’s early investing framework
Reflections on being a solo founder
Early stage challenges
Future product roadmap
Importance of having the right capital partners

In this episode, Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) speaks with Shaurya Gupta and Divyansh Ameta (Co-Founders, Wishlink) on their journey of building Wishlink, a platform enabling creator-led commerce through personalized storefronts.

The duo, along with Chandan Yadav, started Wishlink in 2022 with a keen insight: influencers and content creators, despite owning prime internet real estate (user attention) and being a key source of consumer influence, were failing to capture their fair share of value. Recognizing that over 55% of social media users engage with brands and discover products through these platforms, they saw an opportunity to optimize this process and make it mutually beneficial for consumers, brands, and creators. Thus, Wishlink was born.

By developing a sophisticated tech stack, Wishlink drives transparent and measurable attribution for brands, thus enabling creators to generate consistent, meaningful income. Their efforts have culminated in fantastic growth, with the company recently doubling its monthly GMV to Rs 10 crores in just 2 months, working with 250+ content creators and 60+ brands. By leveraging technology across the value chain, Wishlink is revolutionizing creator-led commerce, especially in the context of India’s booming $70B+ e-commerce market, predicted to grow 2-3X in the next 5 years.

Join us as Shaurya and Divyansh discuss Wishlink's genesis, its unique problem-solving approach, and their dreams of rewriting the playbook for e-commerce. They delve into their data-driven product development, the experiences and insights shaping their operations, experiments to achieve PMF, and the impact of Wishlink on the rapidly growing creator economy. This enlightening conversation also explores the challenges faced by Shaurya and Divyansh, the lessons learned, and the tremendous potential of creator-led commerce in the digital age.

In this episode, Chirag Chadha (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks with Vedang Patel (Co-Founder & CEO, The Souled Store) on the journey of building The Souled Store, India’s largest fan merchandise destination and one of the most loved casualwear brands.

Founded in 2013 out of a sheer passion for pop culture, The Souled Store started with the belief that India needed a dedicated fan merchandise destination. The core insight was that the customer, back in the day, had only two extreme choices when it came to purchasing fandom-based apparel - super expensive US imports or the cheap, poor-quality fakes that were sold in unorganized retail markets. The Souled Store caught on to this missing middle and launched fan merchandise with proprietary designs, and at an affordable price, largely scaling the business through their own channels.

Over time, as the company witnessed very high retention, the team realized that the customers came to TSS, not just for designs, but also for the right quality of fabric and fit. The Souled Store then started evolving into a casual-wear brand, and this segment now contributes to ~40% of the revenue. The company now boasts of having a registered user base of ~5 Mn customers and an annualized net revenue run-rate of INR 300 Cr while being PAT profitable. TSS is a true D2C company, with 90%+ revenue coming from its own channels - web, app, and offline stores.

Tune into this episode to hear Vedang sharing his thoughts on building a brand and its essential elements. Vedang also speaks about bootstrapping for the first 6 years and how that built discipline, frugality, and good culture.

In this episode, Deepak Gaur (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Nitin Saluja (Co-Founder & CEO, Chaayos) on his journey of building Chaayos, India’s most loved & largest tea cafe chain.

Nitin started Chaayos in 2012 with the core insight that getting consistently good quality tea outside home in a hygienic environment was a regular struggle for consumers. While a bunch of organized players had started entering India with coffee as the primary beverage, tea is the beverage of choice for India, and therefore starting a tea-cafe chain felt obvious to him back then. With a focus on supreme quality, and by keeping personalization at its core, Chaayos has found fantastic consumer acceptance, and the company has now scaled to 200+ outlets across 6 cities in India. By leveraging technology across the value chain, from delivering consistently personalized chai across outlets through Chai Bots to building a very sophisticated loyalty engine & measuring retention cohorts in an offline business, Chaayos is demonstrating how new-age QSRs can be built out of India.

Listen to Nitin as he talks about Chaayos’ genesis, early journey, scaling up, and dreaming big. Nitin also covers the framework he used to narrow down the problem statement, his experiments to achieve PMF, the depth-first approach to outlet expansion, and building the right team.

In this episode, Poorvi Vijay (Associate Vice President, Elevation Capital) speaks to Sneha Roy (Co-Founder, Murf) on her journey of building a world-class AI-powered text-to-speech platform from India.

Murf is an AI-enabled online voice-over studio that allows users to generate and edit voice overs which allows users to generate and edit voice overs and sync them with visuals in a simple and inexpensive way. Whether it is creating a new product explainer video or creating a podcast, you can choose from 120 + Murf Voices to serve a variety of use cases. Murf helps users to go from text to speech with a versatile AI voice generator. Murf also offers products like google slides add on, voice cloning to help a variety of users. Their solution has surely empowered many individuals and enterprise teams to produce content faster. What we liked about Murf was the amazing team and their ability to scale up quickly in the synthetic audio space.

Listen to Sneha as she talks about her story, early days at Murf, and how she went about building a team.

In this episode, Akarsh Shrivastava (Principal, Elevation Capital) speaks to Sarthak Jain (Founder, Nanonets) on his journey of building a world-class AI-driven data automation platform from India.

Nanonets is a No Code AI-driven automation platform giving businesses smarter ways to run document-based operations such as capturing data, storing and routing documents associated with spend management, procurement processes, loyalty reward programs, and more. Nanonets provides businesses with both user-interface components and APIs that can be connected to business data sources and can be used to update ERP, SAP, and accounting software (among others) to streamline document workflow processes. Their solution has truly democratized document automation by making it accessible to SMB and mid-market customers. What excited us about Nanonets was how the product was cutting-edge but still easy to use and how Sarthak and Prathamesh had figured out a scalable PMF with very little capital.

Listen to Sarthak as he talks about the early days of Nanonets, his approach to building his A-team, and more.

In this episode, Kshitij Jayakrishnan (AVP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Shaaran Lakshminarayanan (Founder, Brine Finance) on his journey of building the most seamless and accessible crypto trading platform for the globe.

Shaaran’s foray into the crypto world started at a very young age of thirteen with his keen interest in security and cryptography. Over time, he conceptualized and built Krypto, which was a centralized exchange and was the first avatar of Brine. During the journey, Shaaran was quick to realize that it was essential to build the platform in a decentralized manner in order to ensure a top-notch secure experience. The team has now been working on Brine for the last few months, which provides users the seamlessness of a centralized exchange experience while actually remaining decentralized. While building Brine, the team has ensured that the users don’t have to pay any gas fees, making it a super accessible platform with $1 Bn+ traded volume on testnet across 45k+ users already.

Listen to Shaaran as he talks about his early journey in the Crypto world, the pivot to Brine, its differentiated approach, the tech behind it, building a strong community, and the vision for Brine going forward.

In Episode 11 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Gaurav Hinduja and Sashank Rishyasringa, co-founders of axio (formerly, Capital Float) on their journey of building India's leading consumer finance company offering BNPL, credit, and personal finance management under one seamless brand experience. On a mission to make credit worthy for all, axio leverages technology to deliver innovative financial products to millions of individuals across the country, including vast sections of traditionally under-served consumers.

axio started in 2014 as a digital lender for SMEs in India. The team understood that technology could be leveraged to solve multiple problems that traditional lenders faced: the high cost of small-ticket lending, difficulty in acquiring customers and underwriting them, and managing cashflows. While the original thesis focused on SMEs, the team started to see a stronger opportunity in the consumer segment and started working on some initiatives to validate the same in 2018. Witnessing faster and more efficient growth, the company decided to focus completely on the consumer segment thereafter.

Listen to Gaurav & Sashank as they talk about the initial thesis, the switch to consumer lending, nuances of BNPL in India, organizational & operational strengths built, axio’s approach to consumer credit, and the vision for the company going forward.

In Episode 10 of Summit Series, Deepak Gaur (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Chakradhar Gade (Co-founder, Country Delight) on the journey of building India’s largest fresh daily essentials brand.

Country Delight started in 2013 as a direct-to-customer dairy brand. While larger cooperatives such as Amul are solving for milk availability for everyone, Country Delight focuses on attributes such as freshness, quality, and minimal processing for the discerning consumer. Their secret sauce is a structurally better supply chain built on 2 main pillars; First, leveraging tech to build an app-based subscription platform making it hassle-free for consumers to order essentials daily to create predictability. Second, procuring directly from thousands of farmers to deliver products in <48 hours from produce to ensure quality & freshness.

Over time, Country Delight has expanded its value proposition to fresh products across multiple categories including bread, eggs, and fruits and vegetables, by leveraging its low-cost supply chain and app-based daily ordering platform. When we first met Chakri & Nitin in 2017, the company served 6K households. At the time of recording this episode, they bring subscription-based, fresh daily essentials such as milk, bread, fruits & vegetables to ~3 lakh households across 16 cities, having more than doubled in growth (by revenue) every year from 2019 until 2022.

Tune in to this episode to hear Chakradhar talk about his journey of bootstrapping the company for the first 5 years, and then entering a phase of hyper-growth having raised $150 Mn+ in the last 3 years. Chakradhar also covers aspects such as finding PMF in the early days, what building a brand has meant to him & why he is focused on retention across all aspects of his business including the team.

In this episode, Chirag Chadha (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Minu Margeret (Founder and CEO, Bliss Club) on Bliss Club’s journey of transforming women’s active lifestyle wear in India.

Founded in 2020, amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, Bliss Club started out as a community for women who move. The community helped Minu uncover deep insights into the gaps in the space and led to the realization that women in India are extremely underserved by incumbent activewear brands, which she then set out to solve with the brand. In a short period of time, the brand has scaled rapidly while maintaining best-in-class NPS and retention metrics. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor at the Seed stage by leading the $2.5 Mn round and deepened its commitment to the company by investing super pro-rata in the recently announced $15 Mn Series A. Listen to Minu as she walks us through her early days, the importance of and learnings from community & team-building in the company’s journey, Bliss Club’s framework for evaluating opportunities, dealing with self-doubt as a solo founder, and the opportunity that lies ahead for the brand.

In Episode 8 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Amit Kumar Agarwal (Co-founder, NoBroker) on the journey of building India’s first prop-tech unicorn.

NoBroker was founded in 2014 and since then, the company has served over 16 million customers across India and has over 7.5 Mn properties listed on its platform. Over the years, NoBroker has also expanded its offerings to financial services (home loans, rent payments & deposit loans, insurance etc.), home services (cleaning, furniture, packers & movers, etc.), and also new platforms such as NoBrokerHood in the community management space, thereby becoming the one-stop solution for everything real-estate. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor by leading the $3 Mn seed round in February 2015.

In this episode of Summit Series - Day One, Vasudha Wadhera (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Anup Agarwal (Co-founder, Mintifi) on the journey of transforming B2B BNPL and business payments in India.

Mintifi partners with leading brands such as Tata Motors, Jockey, Berger Paints, etc. through its plug & play platform and enables inventory financing for their distributors and retailers. Traditional lending products do not meet the immediate, short-term needs of SMEs, which constitute ~80% of their total financing needs. With proprietary credit underwriting technology and real-time digital processing, Mintifi provides credit on tap to these SMEs. This creates a win-win proposition for brands, distributors, and retailers, fuelling revenue growth across the supply chain.

In Episode 6 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Varun Dua (Co-founder, Acko) on the journey of building a tech-first insurance platform.

Acko was founded in 2016 and in a short period of time, the company has launched insurance products across a number of verticals such as auto, health, appliance protection, and travel, and served 70 Mn+ customers. This approach has been well accepted by customers as Acko commands industry-leading NPS scores and has been growing close to 3X YoY, with current premiums run-rate over $150 Mn. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor in its record (back then) $30 Mn seed round that Acko raised in November 2015. Listen to Varun talk about the difference between a tech-first & digital-first approach, Acko’s brand-building journey, what’s next for the insure-tech giant, and more.

In Episode 5 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Siddharth Jain (CEO and Co-founder, Playsimple Games) on the journey of building a global gaming giant from India.

Founded in 2014 by former Zynga executives Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy, and Suraj Nalin along with former WalmartLabs engineer Siddhanth Jain, PlaySimple operates multiple mobile games in the word gaming genre. Today, it is a leading company globally in the free-to-play gaming space, with over 75 million installs and 2 million daily active users. In July 2021, Playsimple was acquired by the Swedish gaming giant, MTG, in what was one of the biggest gaming exits in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Elevation partnered with PlaySimple in November 2016 when we invested $3.2 Mn as part of a $4 Mn Series A round in the company. The company did not raise any subsequent capital until the acquisition. The journey with PlaySimple has been one of many firsts for Elevation, and is quite contrary to the way venture-funded businesses are usually imagined and built in India. In this episode, Sid uncovers the nuances behind his unconventional journey, how his time at Zynga helped him scale Playsimple, his frameworks for innovation, how he was able to build a culture of analytics and metrics orientation in the business, and more.

In Episode 4 of Summit Series, Mukul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Vidit Aatrey (Co-founder and CEO, Meesho) on the zero-to-one journey of building India’s largest social commerce platform.

In the six years since its inception in 2015, the scale at which Meesho operates is spectacular. Today, Meesho has over 13 million registered entrepreneurs on its platform, a majority of whom are women, and over one lakh registered suppliers, most of whom are SMEs and new to the internet. The company has helped generate over INR 500 crore in income for entrepreneurs so far and was valued at USD 2.1 Bn in the most recent round of financing led by Softbank.

In this episode, Vidit speaks about how he and his co-founder (Sanjeev Barnwal) zeroed in on ‘Meesho 1.0’, the insights which led them to pivot the platform towards women, why he believes that less capital is a blessing in disguise for startups, the culture of customer obsession at Meesho and more.

In Episode 3 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Abhiraj Bhal (Co-founder and CEO, Urban Company) on the journey of building a global home-services company out of India.

Urban Company was founded in November 2014. In less than seven years, the company has delivered 25 million+ home services and empowered 35,000+ service professionals to run their own businesses across varied categories, such as beauty, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, and appliance repair.

In Part 2 of this episode, Abhiraj speaks about the evolution of his leadership style and the culture of data transparency at UC, how bar raisers positively influence the team, and why it is important for him to take UC public.

In Episode 3 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Abhiraj Bhal (Co-founder and CEO, Urban Company) on the journey of building a global home-services company out of India.

Urban Company was founded in November 2014. In less than seven years, the company has delivered 25 million+ home services and empowered 35,000+ service professionals to run their own businesses across varied categories, such as beauty, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, and appliance repair.

In Part 1 of this episode, Abhiraj speaks about his journey of transitioning from consulting to the start-up world, his advice to founders on fundraising, Urban Company’s value system, and global aspirations, and more. He also talks about how TAM for a category-defining company will always be an open question.

In Episode 2 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital), speaks to Ankush Sachdeva (Co-Founder & CEO, Sharechat) about his incredible journey as CEO of India’s first purely non-English social networking platform. He talks about the evolution of Sharechat over the last 6 years and the culture of rapid experimentation in the company.

Ankush shares his vision for Mohalla Tech (which owns Sharechat and Moj) as going beyond being just a social media platform to being India’s first AI-powered content ecosystem. He tells Mayank of the power of AI in bringing tailored content to the user, in preventing abuse, and in creating a much more engaging content ecosystem overall. He also speaks about what drives him to greater heights and how his vision for the company is limited only by his dreams and ambitions.

In this inaugural episode of the Summit Series, Ravi Adusumalli, Managing Partner at Elevation, speaks to Deep Kalra, Founder, Group CEO & Chairman of MakeMyTrip. MMT was founded in 2000, was one of the first Indian companies to list in the US, and has been a flag bearer for Indian internet companies. Deep speaks about why he preferred listing in the US over India, how founders should think about growth vs cash burn, how MMT went about hiring and retaining talent in the early days, learnings from MMT’s experience of acquiring GoIbibo, and more.