Mesa School of Business, a Bengaluru-based institution that trains students to build and run companies, has raised Rs 110 crore in a fresh funding round. The capital has been raised as a combination of equity and venture debt rather than through a single instrument.
Around Rs 85 crore of the total is Series A equity funding, co-led by Dharana Capital and existing investor Elevation Capital. The remaining Rs 25 crore is venture debt from InnoVen Capital and Alteria Capital. According to the company, the round values Mesa School of Business at Rs 385 crore.
The Funding Round and Its Investors
The equity cheque is co-led by Dharana Capital, a fund whose founder and managing partner, Vamsi Duvvuri, has spoken about the gap between higher education and the roles available at technology companies. Dharana was active elsewhere in the market as well: it recently led a USD 10 million Series A in the agentic video startup Clueso.
Elevation Capital, an existing backer, returned for the new round. Mesa is also backed by a group of well-known founders, including Kunal Shah of CRED, Vidit Aatrey of Meesho, Abhiraj Bhal of Urban Company and Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm.
Where the Money Will Go
Mesa will use the proceeds to build an AI-first curriculum across its existing programmes, launch and scale new courses, and strike strategic partnerships inside the startup ecosystem. The scope is fairly tight for a round of this size: the money is going into curriculum and partnerships rather than into physical expansion.
Read more: Dharana Capital, which co-led this round, also backed the agentic video startup Clueso, which raised USD 10 million in a Series A to automate video production for businesses.
A School Built Around Building
Mesa runs residential programmes for undergraduates, fresh graduates and early-career professionals. Its model is built around doing: every student builds and runs a small business, and every student learns to use AI to develop and launch a technology product. The school says more than 100 founders have taught on campus, and that students have worked on over 200 projects with startups.
The school has grown from a single postgraduate cohort to more than 550 students across three programmes in three years. They are a one-year Post Graduate Programme in Startup Leadership, a four-year undergraduate programme in business and entrepreneurship, and Forge, a one-year programme for fresh graduates. Mesa says nearly 20 percent of its graduates have become entrepreneurs, and that more than 50 student ventures are incubated at its in-house Mesa Startup Lab.
Background and the Founders
Mesa School of Business was co-founded in 2023 by Ankit Agarwal and Varun Limaye. Agarwal has said the school’s core tenets have not changed as it has scaled: every student builds something real and learns new-age skills, with founders always in the room to give feedback.
Its placement record is part of the pitch. The school says students from its first two postgraduate cohorts secured an average cost-to-company of Rs 26 lakh, with the top quarter averaging Rs 36.5 lakh, and that all placed students from those cohorts joined startups. It adds that 58 percent of them took founder-facing roles.
What Happens Next
The bet behind the round is that business education has to change along with the tools. Mesa is not selling access to a campus or a brand; it is selling the claim that students leave able to build and ship. That claim is what the new capital has to prove at scale.
With more than 550 students and three programmes running, the next phase is about whether the model holds as cohorts get bigger. The reported Rs 385 crore valuation also sets a higher bar for the school as it widens its curriculum and its network of partners.
