Monetizing consumer apps, Investing in Schmooze, AI Ideathon and more...

Welcome to a brand new edition of Summit Review, where we keep you updated on everything that's been happening here at Elevation and our portfolio companies.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve had the pleasure to meet and exchange ideas with several builders, budding entrepreneurs and senior operators through events and perspectives from our Consumer, SaaS and Fintech practices, and our Founder Success team.

As always, we are eager to meet audacious founders with groundbreaking ideas. If that's you, do reach out to us.

Let's dive in!

Upcoming Events

Elevation Kickstarter: New Era of Consumer Monetization

November 20, 2024 | Bengaluru

Register here.

Elevation News

Welcoming Chirag Chadha and Vaas Bhaskar to the Partnership

We're delighted to announce the promotions of Chirag Chadha and Vaas Bhaskar to Partners. Their journey with Elevation embodies all the values we hold dear, and we’re excited to see the impact they’ll make in their new roles. Read more in our blog.

Portfolio News

Schmooze

We are excited to go public with our relationship with Schmooze by leading their $4M Series A round as Vidya Madhavan and Abhinav Anurag build an AI-powered meme-based dating app to reinvent how Gen-Z connects in the digital age. In just 10 months since its launch in India, Schmooze has attracted over 1 million users and has witnessed a staggering 900 million meme swipes. Welcome to the Elevation family, Schmooze! Read the investment memo here.

Vridhi Home Finance

We are excited to strengthen our ongoing partnership with Vridhi Home Finance through their $37M Series B round as it leads the charge in making home ownership attainable for underserved communities across India. Vridhi has made impressive strides in the past year, scaling its AUM by 700% to ?200 crore. Wishing Ram Naresh, Sunil Mehta, Sandeep Arora, and the entire Vridhi team continued success!

Everstage

We are proud to announce our participation in Everstage’s $30M Series B round, doubling down on our partnership as Siva Rajamani and Vivek Suriyamoorthy redefine the operations of RevOps and sales compensation teams for organizations across the globe. As Everstage gears up to scale further, we are thrilled to support their journey towards global excellence. Onwards and upwards! Read our investment memo from 2022 here.

Atlys

We're thrilled to co-lead Atlys’ $20M Series B round, deepening our partnership that began with their Series A in 2023. It has been heartening to see Atlys’ evolution from a simple visa application platform to a comprehensive travel services provider. Atlys scaled its business 20x over the past year and has processed over 1 million visas globally to date. Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation) sat down with founder Mohak Nahta to discuss the company's journey over the past year and their plans for the next phase of growth. Watch here.

AppsForBharat

In the last edition, we announced the deepening of our partnership with AppsForBharat through their Series B round. Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation) caught up with founder Prashant Sachan to discuss the company’s evolution over the past year and their roadmap for the future, including global expansion plans. Watch here.

Elevation Perspectives

The Founder's Guide to Consumer App Monetization: Part 1

We had recently discussed how Indian social/content platforms are now successfully monetizing users directly at scale, adopting non-advertising models like subscriptions and micropayments, now a sizable and fast-growing $3B revenue pool. In a new two-part article series, we are diving deeper into how founders can build and monetize consumer applications effectively in this new era of monetization. In Part 1, we examine how a new generation of consumer tech companies are scaling up monetization earlier in their journey and how the tradeoff between user monetization potential and the number of paying users shapes different business models.

AI Ideathon

To see exciting ideas in consumer GenAI come to life, we recently organized the AI Ideathon, a first-of-its-kind competition designed to catalyze the next wave of AI-powered consumer applications. We received over 50 applications from 12 cities spanning a wide range of use cases and witnessed firsthand the creativity and innovation of many bright young minds in AI. Visit here for a closer look at the submissions of all the winners and finalists, and event highlights.

Investing in Schmooze

We thought Schmooze, a meme-based dating app, deserved a meme-based investment memo. Vidya Madhavan and Abhinav Anurag bring a deep understanding of the Gen Z psyche, and their vision for creating a taboo-free and outcome-oriented dating app for India strongly resonated with us. Within 8 months of its India launch, Schmooze has grown to 250k+ MAU while maintaining a well-balanced gender ratio versus the industry standard and best-in-class engagement metrics. Swipe through our memo here.

Elevation Events

CTO Roundtable

Our inaugural CTO Roundtable, hosted by Harsh Agrawal (CTO in Residence, Elevation) from our Founder Success function, brought together 18 CTOs and engineering leaders from our portfolio companies. The discussions were meaningfully deep and insightful, focusing on several critical areas crucial for navigating a fast-evolving landscape. We look forward to hosting more such sessions, diving deeper into specific topics that matter most to our tech leaders, and engaging more deeply with our portfolio tech community.

Elevation Connect 2024

We’re pleased to share that the response to Elevation Connect 2024, the sixth edition of our signature investor-portfolio connect program, has been very encouraging. Across both virtual and offline legs, we facilitated 600+ meaningful interactions between nearly 50 of our portfolio companies representing a wide array of sectors and a diverse lineup of 170 global investors. As we look to the future, we are excited about the possibilities these connections will unlock, driving innovation, growth, and positive change in India and beyond.

Elevation in Media

Mukul Arora on the Indian startup and venture environment - ET Live

Elevation Capital promotes Chirag Chadha, Vaas Bhaskar to partners - The Economic Times

Mukul Arora Wins Midas Touch Award at ET Startup Awards 2024 - Video

See you in the next edition!