Ashish won the National Cyber Olympiad in grade 3.
He bought Udemy courses for ₹300.
The episode featuring Ashish drops tomorrow.
The Elevator Pitch program is built “for the founder”, not for me, offering a chance to tell their story, a professionally shot video, user feedback, and from Season 2 an investment from me.
One Elevator Pitch delivers roughly 10× the founder reach of a 1‑hour podcast.
I added Anshul Gupta as the on‑camera coach for Season 2 to personally coach every founder before they step in front of the camera.
Anshul is a 3‑time founder who has raised over $15 M, built YellowClass (now SpeakX) into a top Indian ed‑tech platform, and now runs Bharat Founder School.
The focus moved from polishing final video content to simply getting non‑obvious founders seen, because the real barrier is storytelling and camera comfort, not production quality.
Founders deserve a space to tell their story without a warm intro, without a 50‑slide deck, without bullshit.
Every single one walked away clearer.
I highlighted a 17‑year‑old founder from Dhanbad who is building a product to help him make sense of the one moment in life that shattered him the most.
For the upcoming Elevator Pitch 2.0 edition I allocated ₹5 crore, opened applications until July 10, received 300+ applications, and set the next live event for Bengaluru at the end of July, with eligibility limited to startups seeking financing under ₹50 crore valuation.
I created Elevator Pitch to change how early‑stage founders get discovered.
Founders get a 60–70‑second window to pitch directly to me, receive real‑time feedback, and understand what it actually takes to build something that scales.
The live pilot will be run at IIT Delhi on October 16th, where I will select 10–12 startups from the incubation centre, have them pitch in a packed auditorium, post all pitches on my platform for visibility, and may invest in any startup that shows something special.
The event is scheduled for October 16th.
Location: IIT Delhi.
I will select 10–12 startups to pitch live.
Applications are open via https://lnkd.in/gX9JbsVQ.
Open questions include the exact investment criteria, the structure of the real‑time feedback, follow‑up support for non‑selected founders, and how to measure the visibility impact.