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.