Mesa School of Business launches India’s first startup-focused B-School in Bangalore; raises INR 34 Crore from Elevation Capital, other prominent angel investors

With an aim to build India’s first business school focused on creating Startup Leaders, Mesa School of Business has raised INR 34 Crores from Elevation Capital and notable angel investors such as Kunal Shah (Cred), Vidit Aatrey (Meesho), Abhiraj Bahl, and others who continue to join each week. With the help of these funds, Ankit Agarwal and Varun Limaye (alumni of Harvard, Kellogg, Urban Company and Amazon) aim 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.

This comes in contrast to traditional MBAs that focus on teaching theoretical topics and focus on equipping their students for careers in Consulting and other similar traditional roles and industries. 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 a 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.

Following up on the fund announcement, In a joint statement, the founding team of Mesa School of Business 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. We have kept our inaugural cohort small at only 60 exceptional students to keep the experience personal, deliver an unparalleled learning experience and ensure strong outcomes for our students.”

The program will also focus on individual leadership growth for students with 200+ hours of leadership workshops with army veterans, communication & stage presence hackathons with coaches & theatre artists and 1:1 industry mentorship. For example, Lt General V K Mishra (AVSM, PVSM, Commandant Indian Military Academy), has been invited to share “Leadership Lessons from the Field” with the founding cohort of students.

The campus is strategically located in Bangalore with 500+ startup offices within a 5 km radius, providing unprecedented access for students to the startup ecosystem and its prominent leaders. Additionally, the 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.

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.”

Seasoned startup founders, practitioners and senior leaders have been involved in designing the curriculum and program, out of which many have agreed to come onboard as faculty and mentors. 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.

The Mesa School of Business program promises to give better return on investment (ROI) for working professionals over traditional 2-year MBAs. The founding cohort for the one-year PG program in Startup Leadership is set to commence in September this year. The course fee is INR 14.95 lac for a full year, and residential facilities are available upon request. There will be significant scholarship support offered to the founding cohort to remove all financial hindrances and build a truly diverse group of exceptional student peers, like women leaders, entrepreneurs and ex-armed forces/athletes/creative artists, and more.

To ensure that the student peer group is of exceptional quality, the founding cohort is being kept very exclusive and limited to only 60 students. First application deadline is on 28-May 2023. More than 300+ applications have already been submitted with founders expecting final numbers to be more than 1000. Final selection will be very exclusive and kept at less than 5% of all applicants.