We are excited to bring you an insightful conversation between Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital) and Ankit Agarwal & Varun Limaye (Co-founders, Mesa School of Business), who are building India’s first startup-focused B-school to create entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.

Ankit and Varun observed that companies across India’s startup and tech ecosystem were finding it difficult to hire talent with market-relevant skills and hands-on experience in business building, especially for business and leadership roles.

Having worked in business functions across leading tech companies like Urban Company and Amazon, they understood the future needs of this growing sector and set out to deliver industry-relevant outcome-focused business education for professionals aiming to build a career in the tech ecosystem.

The Harvard and Kellogg alumni discuss their first principles approach to reimagining every aspect of a higher education institution bottom-up and how they constructed a unique curriculum by involving the startup ecosystem.

In this episode, you will gain insights on:

1. Why Ankit and Varun zeroed in on higher-ed

   
   



2. Closing the skills gap for business roles

   
   



3. Offline, full-time program as a design choice

   
   



4. Immersive startup-focused program structure and faculty

   
   



5. How they built the founding batch

   
   

Mesa’s first 12-month in-person program with 60 handpicked students is currently underway, and applications for its 2025 cohort are now open. Apply here: https://mesaschool.co/