Elevation Capital

🎙️ Presenting the first episode of ‘No BS by Elevation Capital’, a brand new podcast series where, as the name suggests, we cut through the noise and bring you actionable insights on navigating the earliest days of venture-building. No BS will share the tribal knowledge we've accumulated over 20+ years of working with India's best early-stage founders to the benefit of anyone early in their entrepreneurial journey. In our debut episode, Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President, Elevation Capital) and Vaibhav Chowdhury (AVP, Elevation Capital) join Krishna Veera Vanamali Y (AVP Marketing - Content, Elevation Capital) to deconstruct the art and science of crafting the perfect pitch deck. Featuring never-seen-before slides from the first pitch decks of category-defining Elevation portfolio companies like Swiggy, Urban Company, Blissclub, Comet, Atlys, PlaySimple Games and Meesho, they break down six key principles that consistently appear in winning pitch decks. Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/g_7nbcQ9 Stay tuned for more episodes tackling the questions every early-stage founder wants answered.

What an incredible three days at SaaSBoomi Annual '25 in Chennai last week! This edition marked a seminal moment for the Indian SaaS/AI ecosystem, as the shift to AI and its critical importance were brought to the forefront of discussions. At Elevation, we are delighted to collaborate with SaaSBoomi, which gave us the opportunity to inform and shape Annual ‘25, particularly through the curation of several panels that explored the transformative power of AI. Krishna Mehra (AI Partner, Elevation) joined Dev Khare, Mohan Kumar, and Dharmesh Thakker to discuss AI's breakneck evolution and identify sectors primed for disruption in a session moderated by Ashwini Asokan. Krishna also moderated an insightful discussion alongside Aakash Dharmadhikari, diving into how AI is blending traditional SaaS and services models. Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation) led a closed-door brainstorming session exploring future opportunities for deep vertical AI startups in robotics with Farid Ahsan, Mahek Mody⤴️, Rishi Israni, and Saurabh Chandra. Poorvi Vijay (Vice President, Elevation) shared tactical advice on approaching investors and overcoming funding biases through strategic storytelling alongside Deepti Prasad and Priya Ramachandran in a panel discussion moderated by Shivangi Sahu. We came away deeply excited about the future of AI-driven innovation emerging from India through our conversations with founders, operators and other thought leaders who were assembled at Annual '25. We are particularly enthusiastic about the launch of BoomiAI, which represents a bold step towards fostering a vibrant ecosystem that seamlessly integrates SaaS and AI…and how we look forward to contribute to the ecosystem. A massive thank you to the SaaSBoomi team for fostering this incredible pay-it-forward community where founders are at the center. Looking forward to the continued growth of this vibrant ecosystem! Mukul Arora, Avinash Raghava, Neha Arya, Keerthi Madhu, Astha Jakher, Aadith Ramesh

Meesho raised its seed round in late 2017 and pivoted to it's current marketplace model in 2021... the scale of impact in such a short amount of time is mind boggling and really inspiring: 1. 187 Mn transacting users; 400k sellers - truly solving affordability for Indian users and democratizing internet commerce 2. Only profitable horizontal e-commerce company (others still burning close to $1 bn every year) 3. Valmo (logistics platform started 2 years back) would be India's second-biggest e-commerce logistics business if it was a stand-alone company Hats off to Vidit Aatrey Sanjeev Barnwal and the entire Meesho team! 🙌🙌

Proud to see our Frontier Tech portfolio companies SolarSquare Energy and VEGROW recognized in the World's Top Greentech Companies of 2025 list by TIME magazine in partnership with Statista! As India’s #1 residential solar company, SolarSquare Energy is powering the country’s transition to clean energy. Since its inception, it has helped over 20,000 homes and 200+ cooperative housing societies transition to solar. Congratulations to Shreya Mishra, Neeraj Jain and Nikhil Nahar. Meanwhile, VEGROW is transforming India's $50 billion fruit segment through their innovative B2B marketplace which ensures transparency and higher income for farmers, while also reducing carbon consumption through supply chain optimization. Kudos to founders Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik Bhukya and Shobhit Jain! At Elevation Capital, we couldn't be prouder to back these visionary teams who are building sustainable, tech-driven solutions for a greener future. This global recognition is well-deserved and highlights the innovative climate tech solutions emerging from India's startup ecosystem.

“We toured manufacturing hubs across India for our initial customers but…” Skydo co-founder Srivatsan Sridhar shares in our latest Day One podcast with Mridul Arora how they initially targeted manufacturers based on his background—only to discover through a tweet that their initial market was services exporters. Tune into the full episode to learn how Skydo is making international payments seamless for Indian exporters and scaled to 10,000+ customers: https://lnkd.in/g77Q3Q7G

Here's the latest edition of our monthly newsletter, Summit Review. Over the past month, we welcomed M | O | C Cancer Care & Research Centre to the Elevation family, launched a new podcast series for early-stage builders and engaged with our portfolio community through events across India and the US. Discover more insights and updates in the newsletter below, and subscribe to receive future editions 👇

The energy in India's SaaS and AI ecosystem is palpable. It feels like the whole world has descended upon Chennai for the incredible SaaSBoomi Annual. The conversations we've had already today have reinforced my belief that many of tomorrow's defining AI companies will emerge right here from India. Our team (Mukul, Poorvi, Manish, Astha, Aadith and I) are here in full force, connecting with both familiar faces and new founders. This is truly India's AI moment. At Elevation, we have been accelerating our pace of AI investments. What's inspiring me most are the authentic, problem-first approaches. Teams are leveraging both open-source innovation and our natural advantages in engineering depth to build solutions that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with global products. There is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine traditional industries with AI-native workflow solutions, and also do this for specific verticals. There is a massive opportunity in building the tools and platforms to enable this widespread AI adoption that we are excited about. Thank you to the SaaSBoomi team for creating this incredible pay-it-forward community where founders are at the center. Huge props to Avinash, Nivedha, Keerthi, Ashwin, Sathya, Vinod and the entire SaaSBoomi community! Elevation Capital Mukul Arora Mridul Arora Mayank Khanduja Vaas Bhaskar Chirag Chadha Ravi Adusumalli Poorvi Vijay Namitha D V (Namitha Dodbele Venkatesh)Viswanathan V.

This catch-up has been a long time coming. Back in January 2022, after several brainstorming sessions, we asked each other bluntly, "If you are ready, we are ready — should we do this?" We signed the term sheet for Skydo's seed round when they were still pre-launch and pre-incorporation, and that was the start of a wonderful partnership with Srivatsan and Movin. Since then, they’ve grown from working out of the Elevation office to making global payment collections a seamless experience for 10,000+ SMBs & freelancers and helping save them several crores in needless transaction costs. We discuss their journey from zeroing in on the idea to how they are progressing on their vision of becoming this "cross-border bank for exporters". Loved Srivatsan's analogy that building in financial services is akin to building a cement plant. You can't sell even a gram of cement until the plant's built. Building the right infrastructure and compliance measures precedes everything. That's exactly how we at Elevation look at company-building in financial services. https://lnkd.in/gSfvzxzV PS: Even today, Srivatsan still likes to come in and work from our office occasionally. I guess some habits are hard to break! Srivatsan Sridhar Movin Jain Vasudha Wadhera Elevation Capital Ashray Iyengar

🎙️New Day One podcast episode! "We wanted to make the experience of receiving international payments exactly the same as domestic…" This crystal-clear vision is what led Srivatsan Sridhar and Movin Jain to build Skydo, which is quietly dismantling the confusing, opaque world of cross-border payments for Indian SMBs and freelancers. Srivatsan was acutely aware of the challenges Indian exporters face with international payments from his experience running his family's automotive export business as a second-generation entrepreneur. This deep understanding of exporters' pain points became the compass guiding Skydo's product development. Founded in 2022, Skydo has emerged as a transformative force for Indian SMBs and freelancers handling international payments. Processing $200 million in payments annually from 80 countries and serving 10,000+ businesses, they've built a platform that eliminates the opacity, delays, and excessive fees that have long plagued the industry. In this illuminating conversation with Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital), Srivatsan shares how building deep infrastructure before scaling has positioned Skydo to become a "cross-border operating system", while revealing how compliance-first thinking has been the cornerstone of their success. In this episode, you will gain insights on: > Building financial infrastructure as a competitive moat > Creating a compliance-first culture across the organization > The complex mechanics of international payments > Building trust with regulators and banking partners …and more Watch the episode here: https://lnkd.in/gqZBpfnQ

📥 DOWNLOAD NOW: The ‘No BS’ Guide To Crafting The Perfect Pitch Deck Last week, we broke down key principles that we have seen to be consistent across many winning pitch decks in the first episode of our new podcast series 'No BS by Elevation' with Kshitij Jayakrishnan, Vaibhav Chowdhury and Krishna Veera Vanamali Y. To illustrate these principles in action, we featured exclusive slides from the earliest pitch decks of Swiggy, Urban Company, Blissclub, Comet, Atlys, PlaySimple Games and Meesho. We're now making this framework available as a downloadable playbook for founders building today. Use these six proven principles to guide your pitch deck creation process: > Introduce your business concisely with a powerful one-liner > Captivate your audience with attention-grabbing metrics > Share differentiated insights about your market and product > Showcase the results of your insights through growth and customer love > Highlight why your team is uniquely positioned to win > Present your bold ambition and vision for the future Below is a sneak peek at a few slides from the playbook. Grab the full deck here: https://lnkd.in/gRDSZKmf