Crafting Your -1 to 0 Journey
by Jivraj Singh Sachar
Founder & General Partner at Indian Silicon Valley Capital
OVERVIEW
Learn how to find the right sector and problem
statement to build your first startup from scratch
A system built around shipping your startup. Everything in Mesa Startup Lab is designed to move your company forward capital, sprints, reviews, and mentors that keep you building on a real startup cadence.
Work with the MSL leadership team to identify high-impact problems and cut through noise. These founder-led discussions on markets, wedges, and trade-offs leave you with clear focus and a concrete next step.
Tap into AI/tech, growth, marketing, and ops specialists who help you design experiments, build funnels, and ship faster. From AI agents to activation and performance campaigns, experienced operators work by your side.
Beyond core faculty, you get a rotating bench of founders and senior operators matched to each stage. From validation to pricing, sales, and hiring, experts step in as challenges arise—so mentoring tracks your milestones, not generic advice.
Different roles require different proof. Mesa prepares you for the exact formats founders use to hire cases, take-homes, audits, role-plays, and founder-style interviews so every rep compounds toward your target role.
Build with your co-founders from a dedicated on-campus workspace, with protected program hours for deep work. You get focused build time, meeting rooms, and an environment where everyone is shipping.
Each week, founders share wins, roadblocks, and learnings in “Victory Fridays.” You put numbers on the board and get honest peer feedback—building momentum, accountability, and a strong founder community.
As your startup matures, MSL helps turn proof into funding readiness. You get investor intros, support refining your story and data room, clarity on when and how to raise, and access to Mesa’s in-house fund.
Leverage Mesa’s startup credits, partnerships, and corporate connects. From cloud and AI tools to pilot opportunities with 500+ partners, you get a faster, cheaper path to test, distribute, and validate your product.
Mesa treats entrepreneurship as a muscle, not a buzzword: instead of lectures, you go through high-intensity sprints to find ideas, test demand, build MVPs, win customers and practise fundraising.
by Jivraj Singh Sachar
Founder & General Partner at Indian Silicon Valley Capital
OVERVIEW
Learn how to find the right sector and problem
statement to build your first startup from scratch
by Keshav Jain
Lead investor at Earth Fund, India's only
UrbanTech & Sustainability-focused VC fund.
OVERVIEW
Learn to build and take your MVP to market in
just 2 weeks, gather feedback, and refine your
product for the market
by Rishabh Ladha
Learn how to refine your sales pitch, engage clients,
and convert more B2B leads for your business.
OVERVIEW
Learn to build and take your MVP to market
in just 2 weeks, gather feedback, and
refine your product for the market
by Anirban Ghosh
AVP E-commerce and D2C at SUGAR Cosmetics,
leading the online sales and marketing strategy
for the brand’s beauty and skincare products.
OVERVIEW
Learn how to take your product to platforms like
Amazon and Flipkart, and boost your sales.
by Muskaan Sancheti
Co-Founder, The State Plate — scaled to $1M+ ARR;
raised institutional funding from Antler India and Peyush
Bansal (Lenskart, Shark Tank India).
OVERVIEW
Learn why co-founders matter and how to build the
right founding team as you scale.
by Shivam Arora
Head, Investments & Operations at AngelList India, leading
investment strategies and operations for the platform.
OVERVIEW
Learn how VCs evaluate a pitch, structure your pitch deck,
and master the art of storytelling to impress investors.
by Hari Shankar
Partner at Mad Hauz Media, building brands
through content. Previously, EIR at Kommune India.
OVERVIEW
Learn how great content can drive sales, build your
brand, and strengthen your content strategy for 2025.
by Nish Bhutani
Founder at Indiginus, specializing in investor
marketing for asset managers and financial services..
OVERVIEW
Learn how to run, analyze, and optimize ads on Google
& Meta platforms for maximum impact and ROI.
by Chirag Pugalia
Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Matar Media
OVERVIEW
Dive deep into the art of crafting visual ads that
resonate, build brand recall, and drive conversions.
by Meghana Srinivas
Founder & CEO at TrustIn, specializing in strategy &
program development to drive growth and innovation.
OVERVIEW
Master term sheets, unit economics, and
startup finance for sustainable growth.
Financial runway to focus on building full-time.
Dedicated workspace for the founder and two team members, worth ₹50,000+ monthly.
Classes, sessions, workshops, and learning resources remain open to fellows.
Regular check-ins on product, strategy, and execution.
Hands-on support for campaign setup, distribution, and content strategy from Mesa’s growth team.
Practical help to build, automate, and ship your product faster.
MYINFRA, VetQure AI, Bloc, Mumbai Pav Company, Fabinvest, and Everaw Nutrition are six of the companies MSL founders have built on campus — read their stories below.
By Samyak Jain,, Cohort 2
MYINFRA is a B2B infrastructure materials startup built to fix what's fundamentally broken in building–materials distribution: thin dealer margins, capital locked in inventory, and inconsistent supply quality.
MYINFRA supplies engineered cement products in smaller quantities, faster cycles, and with price-stable quality. Its flagship brand, MYINFRAPLY, focuses on standardisation, branding, and fulfillment speed – helping local dealers compete with national players without choking working capital.
MYINFRA took shape during ideation and early scale. Samyak used the Mesa ecosystem to refine the core thesis by going deep into dealer behaviour and supply-chain economics, then stress-testing the model with small real feedback. That iteration helped in sharpening the dark-warehouse approach, streamline procurement from underutilised manufacturers, and build a repeat-able dealer onboarding playbook.
Building MYINFRA taught me that distribution is not about moving products. It is about moving trust. Dealers do not just need better economics, reliable supply, and someone who understands the reality on the ground.
This is my second startup, and Mesa changed how I think and operate. It helped me slow down when needed, get brutally clear on what matters, and then execute with speed. Every founder and operator conversation forced sharper decisions; not prettier slides.
The biggest lesson I'm taking forward is simple: execution compounds faster than ideas. If you solve a real problem deeply and consistently, scale becomes the by-product.
- Samyak Jain, Cohort 2
By Arjun M S & Balagopal Jayakumar,
VetQure AI is a clinical operating system for modern pet clinics. It turns doctor conversations into structured SOAP notes, generates visual disease summaries, and helps clinics stay connected with pet parents on WhatsApp. The goal is simple: reduce admin time, improve care quality, and help clinics grow revenue.
It started as an early prototype inside Mesa Startup Lab and scaled by doing the opposite of what most people do. They sold before it was perfect, onboarded their first 15 clinics with a Figma flow, then shipped a working voice-to-SOAP EMR in three weeks. Every iteration came straight from clinic feedback, and the positioning stayed tight: not “another software,” but the backbone of modern pet care.
“Before Mesa, I thought building meant coding. Mesa flipped that for me. Building a real company starts with talking to customers, charging early, and creating momentum before you feel ready.
We sold VetQure when it was still duct tape and vision. Then we kept shipping. Feature by feature, only based on what clinics asked for. Mesa also pushed us to tell a bigger story, not just what the product does, but what it enables for veterinary care in India.
Today, VetQure powers 80+ clinics and growing. But it started as an idea in a pitch room. Mesa turned that idea into movement.
- Arjun M S & Balagopal Jayakumar
By Arnav Gupta & Rishabh Agarwal, Cohort 2
Bloc is a new-age insect and pest control brand built for premium homes and commercial spaces. It replaces coils, vaporizers, sprays, zappers, and fogging with a single chemical-free solution that delivers continuous protection. No consumables. No odour. No health risks. Minimal maintenance.
Incubated at Mesa Startup Lab, Bloc was built by questioning everything that already existed in pest control. Instead of short-term repellents or service-heavy models, the team focused on professional-grade performance combined with thoughtful design. The result is a product customers can rely on daily, not just during peak seasons.
From early pilots to hotel deployments, Bloc validated demand on the ground. The team is now manufacturing its own products in India, tightening supply control and laying the foundation for a full suite of smart, chemical-free pest management solutions across households and commercial environments.
Building Bloc as first-time founders was messy and uncertain. Mesa helped us bring clarity to that chaos. Early on, Ankit Agarwal pushed us to stop building for everyone and focus on one clear audience. That shift changed everything. We designed for a specific use case, validated demand through real revenue, and learned to think deeply about pricing and go-to-market from our classes and startup leader sessions.
Mesa connected us with the right mentors at the right moments, whether it was performance marketing, founder-to-founder problem solving, or tough brainstorming calls. Weekly check-ins with our MSL mentor, Siddharth Chauhan, kept us accountable and helped us navigate zero-to-one decisions. Conversations with Varun Limaye reinforced one lesson again and again: keep selling, and always work backwards from where you want to be in 1 and 5 years.
More than frameworks, Mesa gave us belief. The campus environment, constant feedback, and support made us trust ourselves. And when you’re building a startup, that belief is everything. It’s what makes quitting not an option.”
- Arnav Gupta & Rishabh Agarwal, Cohort 2
By Tanay Agarwal & Jash Arora, Cohort 1
Mumbai Pav Company is a quick service restaurant QSR that delivers authentic Mumbai-style street food in Bangalore.
MPC was founded by Jash Arora & Tanay Agarwal, two students from the founding cohort at Mesa. They formulated, clarified & tested their business as part of Mesa Startup Lab, and have seen tremendous growth in the last 1.5 years:
One of the biggest lessons I took away from Mesa was the importance of doing one thing really well. Focus over diversification is something we kept hearing in class, and it shaped how we built Mumbai Pav Co. We learnt to double down on what was working instead of chasing every new idea. For instance, we worked on how to design marketing campaigns and even built a loyalty campaign that directly informed how we think about retention today. When we started raising, the Mesa network made a very real difference. Almost 50 percent of our cap table is made up of angels we met through Mesa, including people like Mohit Gulati, Anand Sinha, Varun Limaye and more.
Many of them first came in as mentors and CXOs who taught in class. As we grew, we took up our own office and scaled the team, and at every step Ankit Agarwal was deeply involved in getting us funding ready. We were connected to lawyers, helped in understanding term sheets, and got to apply everything we learnt in the VC classes to our specific round. From deciding round size to building FOMO and closing the offer on the right terms, Mesa was there through it all
- Tanay Agarwal & Jash Arora, Cohort 1
By Aravind M, Cohort 1
Fab Invest is a Real Estate Investment platform that facilitates small and mid-scale investors to micro-invest in premier real estate projects, earning up to 18% Returns per annum from these Investments.Founded by Aravind M and incubated during his time at Mesa, Fab Invest has now managed assets upwards of 110 Cr.
Through his time at Mesa, Aravind networked heavily, pitching his idea and getting feedback from VCs and startup leaders that came to campus. He also raised capital as part of Mesa Startup Labs at a crucial time during their expansion, and streamlined processes with the help of Ankit – Co-founder at Mesa.
Entrepreneurship is not an easy journey at all - barely 1% of startups make it. A lot of founders go through a rough time in the initial 2 years, and this can be testing. If I were to leave a thought with future Mesa students at the start of their journey, it would be to start something they are truly passionate about, that they really want to build.
Ideas and execution can also be poles apart. In the end, it is only 10% what the idea is, and 90% how you execute it.
- Aravind M, Cohort 2
By Lucky Soni, Cohort 2
Everaw’s signature range is Super Spreads, which contributes about 78 percent of revenue, and it was piloted, launched, and scaled during Mesa’s business building sprint, BYOB.
Lucky entered Mesa at the ideation and family-and-friends sampling stage. The first public feedback came at Mesa’s pitch showdown, which he won through public voting. That win triggered structured testing.
Within days of the BYOB briefing on 2 July 2024, Lucky and Yash defined a new child-focused spread concept and began rapid prototyping on campus. Over 10 weeks they reached roughly 500 customers and generated about ₹2.5 lakh in rezvenue, using the sprint to test pricing, flavours, and packaging without brand pressure.
I used Mesa’s ecosystem selectively and deeply. The mock pitches and investor forums asked the tough questions and forced precision. Marketing Basics across two terms nailed the difference between a need and a want. The VC class with Mohit Gulati gave me that outside-in investor view and term-sheet literacy, GTM with Prof. Ray Titus shaped how we think about cross-sell, upsell, and packaging.
Through BSL, working with Epigamia showed me, ground-level, how scaled product development, labs, and teams actually run. On the business side, we closed about ₹6 lakh in October without burning hard. Our AOV is above ₹1,000 and the near-term target is to cross 1,000 orders a month. Soon, we plan to raise our first checks and make Everaw a pantry staple for our target households!
- Lucky Soni, Cohort 2
Mesa’s in-house incubator, Mesa Startup Lab (MSL), enables students to turn ideas into real, revenue-generating startups with mentorship and funding support.
by Tanay Agarwal & Jash Arora
A QSR bringing the true taste of Mumbai’s street food to Bangalore, backed by ₹4Cr in funding.
5 Cr. ARR
by Aastha Gupta
Wave offers a fully assisted, voice-first AI companion that provides empathetic, culturally relevant support.
100 DAU
by Aravind M
An alternate investment platform enabling everyday investors to participate in high-value real estate projects.
100 Cr. in AUM
by Lucky Soni
A clean-label snacking company reimagining everyday nutrition through innovative, nature-first products.
40 L. ARR
by Drishty Wadhwani
A tech-powered laundry startup bringing speed and convenience to your doorstep with 1-hour pickups, 24-hour drop-offs, and seamless scheduling.
1 Cr. ARR
by Parul Sharma
A platform to upskill architecture students and professionals through structured courses, exam prep & career guidance.
50 L. ARR
by Samyak Jain
A brand-enablement platform for plywood and infrastructure material traders, helping them launch private-label brands through an asset-light model.
1.08 Cr. ARR
by Arnav Gupta & Rishabh Agarwal
A new-age insect control brand that’s changing how India solves the problem of insects.
40 L. ARR
Mesa Startup Lab (MSL) has no separate tuition fee. You access MSL by enrolling in one of Mesa's two full-time programs, and its ₹5 Cr in-house fund is funded through that program:
Accommodation for either program costs ₹2,50,000–₹4,50,000 per year, billed separately. Mesa's loan partners can finance up to 100% of tuition and accommodation over a 12-year tenure, subject to partner approval — not guaranteed by the institution.
Mesa Startup Lab (MSL) is Mesa School of Business's in-house startup incubator: a 12-month founder track inside Mesa's full-time PGP or Forge program in Bengaluru. MSL gives founders access to a ₹5 Cr in-house startup fund to validate, build, and launch a real company.
Mesa Startup Lab has no separate tuition fee. You access MSL by enrolling in Mesa's PGP in Startup Leadership & Entrepreneurship (₹25,35,000–₹27,85,000 by round, excl. 18% GST and accommodation) or PGP in Venture Building / Forge (₹17,35,000–₹17,85,000 by round, excl. 18% GST and accommodation). MSL is funded through that program fee.
Mesa Startup Lab has no separate admissions process. You gain access by being admitted to Mesa's PGP in Startup Leadership & Entrepreneurship or PGP in Venture Building (Forge). Both select through the Mesa Admissions Test (MAT) and a two-stage interview.
Mesa Startup Lab gives founders a ₹5 Cr in-house startup fund; Mesa has invested ₹1.2 Cr+ into student startups to date. After graduation, the Founder Fellowship pays a ₹50,000/month stipend (terms apply) plus WeWork office space for the founder and two teammates.
The Mesa Startup Lab founder journey runs the full 12 months of your PGP or Forge program in four stages: Discover (Months 0–2), Build (Months 3–6), Scale (Months 7–10), and Raise & Launch (Months 11–12).
