YourStory announces founding cohort of Elevate, aims to mentor future women leaders

Elevate, a private community for emerging women leaders, has announced its founding cohort with 17 aspiring women leaders from Flipkart,  Amazon, Microsoft, Swiggy, Dealshare, LetsVenture, and other companies.

The Elevate programme aims to connect the cohort of high-performing mid-career women with CXOs across the startup ecosystem to accelerate their path to leadership roles in two to five years.

Elevate announced its launch at YourStory’s Techsparks 2021 in October, and rolled out its mentor lineup for the founding cohort. The mentors for the first cohort include:

• Ankiti Bose, Founder of Zilingo

• Varun Khaitan, Co-founder of Urban Company
• Shradha Sharma, Founder of YourStory
• Priya Mohan, Investor at Venture Highway 
• Boby Kurian, Director at Softbank
• Anjali Sosale,Partner at WaterBridge Ventures 
• Gazal Kalra, Co-founder of Rivigo
• Manish Chowdhury, Co-founder of Wow Skin Science
• Pratekk Agarwaal, Ex-CBO of BharatPe 
• Revant Bhate, Co-founder & CEO of Mosaic Wellness 
• Sanat Ghosh, Co-founder of Housing.com
• Radhika Ghai, Co-founder of Shopclues 
• Bala Srinivasan, Managing Director of Arkam Ventures 
• Kabeer Biswas, CEO of Dunzo  
• Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder of Scaler Academy
• Siddhartha Pahwa, Former CEO Meru Cabs
• Aditya Ghosh, Board Member at OYO and Fabindia

Elevate is designed with a personalised mentorship path to ensure more women get to leadership roles, and stay there. The team had conversations with 100 + women leaders to select the members, all filled with the desire and ambition to make a difference. 

All cohort members will be matched with a mentor, who will guide them over the next three months. The members would have the chance to listen to leaders deliberate on broad topics in townhalls along with exclusive micro session series. 

Here are the 17 women who made it to Elevate’s founding cohort :

Geeta Bansal:  She is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and currently works as a Program Manager at Microsoft. 

Her superpower: Product Management

Kavita Bankapur: An alumnus of IIM Bangalore and VJTI Mumbai, Kavita works as Director of Marketing in Dealshare, a social ecommerce startup. 

Her superpower: Marketing & consumer internet 

Kanupriya Garg: An alumnus of ABV IIIT, she currently works as a Product Manager at Amazon. She brings with her a decade of experience in Business Intelligence and Data Infrastructure. 

Her superpower: Data Infrastructure, Business Intelligence, and Product

Aditi Gupta: She is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee and currently works as Senior Manager in the Competitive Intelligence Division of Swiggy.

Her superpower: Business Analytics

Diksha Ahi: She is an alumnus of Punjab University and currently works as a Project Manager in Vedantu. 

Her superpower: Project Management

Nansi Mishra: She is an alumnus of Delhi University and is a Co-Founder of 100x Entrepreneur. 

Her superpower: Community Building

Prerna Sharma: She is an alumnus of Delhi University and currently working on Investment and Risk Management at Stack Finance.

Her superpower: Private Equity and Retail Investment

Priyanka Ratnaparkhi: An alumnus of JBIMS Mumbai & VJTI Mumbai, she is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Tradegully. She has also served as CFO for Travisca, acquired by JP Morgan & Chase.  

Her superpower: Financial Consulting, B2B Lending, and 0 to 1 journey of a startup 

Rachitta Juneja: She is an alumnus of JIMS Delhi and National School of Drama and is currently the Founder of Whide. Previously, she built Letstrack, a GPS security company.

Her superpower: Marketing and Brand Management

Riddhi Vyas: An alumnus of Michigan Technology University and Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University. An early-stage investor in Khatabook and BluSmart, she brings with her a decade of experience in the healthtech industry. 

Her superpower: Healthtech and Angel Investing 

Shaista Hussain: She is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and currently works as a Product Manager at ShareChat. She has rich experience in Analytics, being part of the OYO’s Strategy Team earlier. 

Her superpower: Product Management and Business Analytics

Sheetal Singh: An alumnus of Takshila Institution and NMIMS Mumbai, she is currently Director of Communication at Flipkart. She was earlier Head of Communication at Micromax. 

Her superpower: Brand & PR Management 

Sudipta Ghosh: She is an alumnus of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and currently a Vice President at Citibank. She brings with her more than a decade of experience in the Commercial Lending Space Industry. 

Her superpower: Commercial Lending in the SME space 

Sukanya Iyer: She is an alumnus of Delhi University and is currently working in the Founder’s Office at Klub. 

Her superpower: Strategic Partnerships

Supriya Barad: An alumni of St Joseph College of Commerce, Bangalore, she is Associate Vice President of LetsVenture. She has in-depth knowledge of private equity due to her Goldman Sachs experience. 

Her superpower: Client Management and Fundraising 

Maulshree Kalothia: She is an alumni of ISB Hyderabad and St Xavier's College, and currently Founder and Storyteller of the Prithvi Theater. She was earlier Strategy Planning Director, Ogilvy. 

Her superpower: Storytelling and Advertising

Priyanka Serrao: She currently works as a Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs & External Communication, at Flipkart. She brings with her years of experience in PR & Communication at leading agencies like Edelman. 

Her superpower: PR and Communication

As we plan for cohort two of Elevate, we’d love to hear more from women professionals on where we can add value to their professional journey to accelerate their path to leadership.

To share your thoughts and register your interest in future programmes, please click here.  We are listening and look forward to hearing from you.