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Varun Limaye and Ankit Agarwal, Mesa School Of Business Founders
India's Mesa School of Business has raised Rs 34 crore in funding from Elevation Capital, with participation from notable angel investors such as Kunal Shah (Cred), Vidit Aatrey (Meesho), Abhiraj Bahl, and others.
The firm aims to utilize the raised capital to build a cutting-edge, hands-on, and application-based curriculum designed and delivered in partnership with startup leaders and potential future employers for a founding cohort of just 60 hand-picked students.
Founded by Ankit Agarwal and Varun Limaye (alumni of Harvard, Kellogg, Urban Company and Amazon), Mesa School of Business claims to be India’s first B-school programme aimed at transforming young professionals by preparing them for the challenges of leadership roles in startups.
The founders are leveraging their deep industry networks to design a unique learning system with a heavy focus on learning by doing, industry exposure and 1:1 industry mentorship.This will be 12 months, full-time PG program in Startup Leadership based out of Bangalore. At the end of the program, students will get access to opportunities for leadership roles at top startups and technology companies in the country, the statement said.
The program aims to enhance the leadership skills of students by offering various opportunities, including more than 200 hours of leadership workshops conducted by army veterans, hackathons for communication and stage presence with coaches and theater artists, and personalized mentorship from industry experts.
As an illustration, the founding cohort of students will have the privilege of learning about "Leadership Lessons from the Field" from Lt General V K Mishra (AVSM, PVSM), who is the Commandant Indian Military Academy and has been invited to speak.
The campus is strategically located in Bangalore with 500+ startup offices within a 5 km radius. Additionally, Mesa said its campus will offer a state-of-the-art, immersive learning and living space for students to build lifelong peer and industry connections through 20+ boot camps & hackathons to learn, get feedback from and network with top startup CEOs in new-age industries and skill areas like EV, B2B SAAS, Open-AI applications, Design Thinking & UI/UX for leaders, Product & Growth Hacking, Agritech, Building for Bharat, etc.
Mesa also said that seasoned startup founders, practitioners and senior leaders have been involved in designing the curriculum and program. Some key names include Aditya Shrivastava (SVP, Urban Company – “Operating at scale in India”), Himesh Joshi (Founder – Ayu Health, GoZefo, “Build for Healthcare in Middle India”), Mukul Arora (Managing Partner, Elevation Capital – “How to evaluate startup opportunities”), Saurabh Jain (Founder StableMoney, ex-Navi – “Build Fintech business in India”), Suhail Vadgaokar (Head of People, Deserve – “How to build culture & teams in a high growth startup”), Madhura Kale (Principal Product Manager – Amazon – “Product Management in Big Tech”), Rahool Gadkari (Co-Founder – Neufin, Kellogg – “Business of Climate Tech in India”), Neha Bareja (Brand Meesho, “New age marketing for Indian consumers”), among many others.
Statements:
Mesa School of Business Founders, in a joint statement, said, “We believe startups will be responsible for creating the bulk of the new aspirational jobs in India, and yet there isn’t a b-school focused on preparing candidates to be successful in these leadership roles. This gap inspired us to start Mesa School. We have kept ‘learning by doing’ as the core principle of the program where every candidate will get to learn business directly from startup CXOs and practitioners, build startup businesses from scratch as part of coursework and deeply immerse themselves into Bangalore’s startup ecosystem."
Commenting on the announcement, Mukul Arora, Managing Partner, Elevation Capital, said, “We believe there is a clear opportunity to build new age, outcome-focused higher-ed institutes in India. Therefore we could immediately relate to Ankit and Varun’s vision of building a business school of the future, focussed on entrepreneurship and the start-up ecosystem. Their long term orientation, and their focus on creating very high quality experience and outcome for students really stood out for us. We are thrilled to partner with them on this journey to create an iconic Indian higher-ed institution.”
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