About
Ankit Agarwal is a co-founder of Mesa School of Business, a Bengaluru business school built around startup leadership, which he started with Varun Limaye. Before Mesa he worked at Urban Company, the home-services platform, and earlier at the Boston Consulting Group. He studied at IIT Bombay and later at Harvard Business School. Mesa launched in 2023 with a 12-month, full-time postgraduate programme in startup leadership, in which students build their own ventures while learning business fundamentals from startup founders and operators; its founding cohort was capped at 60 students. In April 2023 the school raised about ₹34 crore ($4 million) in a seed round led by Elevation Capital, with angel investors including CRED founder Kunal Shah, Meesho co-founder Vidit Aatrey and Urban Company co-founder Abhiraj Bhal. By September 2026 Mesa ran three programmes, covering fresh graduates and MBA candidates, and Entrackr reported that it was set to raise around ₹100 crore in a Series A, split between equity and venture debt.
Mesa competes in India's new-age business education segment alongside Masters' Union, Altera Institute and Scaler. Sources told Entrackr in September 2026 that the school's annual revenue and student enrolments had grown about 2.5 times over the previous year, and that co-founder Varun Limaye was looking to sell about 2.9% of his stake to existing investors in a secondary deal worth roughly ₹3 crore alongside the Series A; that round had not closed at the time of reporting. Mesa has said its curriculum is designed with startup leaders and includes leadership workshops and one-on-one industry mentorship.
Source: asugsvsummit.com
