Elevation Capital Ropes In Former Meta Executive Krishna Mehra As Partner

Venture capital and growth equity investment firm Elevation Capital has roped in former Meta executive Krishna Mehra as partner to lead SaaS and AI investments for the fund.

In his new role, Mehra will be based out of Silicon Valley and will further help the VC firm to sharpen its focus on the India-US corridor.

His appointment will also aid Indian SaaS and AI founders who are aiming for global markets and deepen the firm’s engagement with Indian diaspora founders, who are leveraging talent and innovation across both ecosystems, Elevation said in a statement.

“Mehra carries an exceptional track record as a founder, operator, and investor. And his values deeply resonate with us – his humility, long-term thinking, hands-on and empathetic approach to working with founders, and missionary zeal to help them succeed, align perfectly with our philosophy at Elevation,” said Mukul Arora, co-managing partner at Elevation Capital.

Earlier, Mehra led engineering for messaging ads at Meta, where he drove more than $10 Bn in revenue through AI-powered products and deployed some largest machine-learning models, including early adoption of Meta’s Llama. 

Prior to that, he architected enterprise-grade and exabyte-scale cloud systems at Cohesity. In 2008, he co-founded Capillary Technologies, helping establish India’s early SaaS landscape and scaling the company to serve 300 Mn consumers globally.

He also co-founded a marketplace and subscription commerce startup Taro, which was later bought by EAT Club.

Elevation Capital provides seed and early-stage capital for emerging companies in India. Having invested in the country since 2002, the firm claims to have deployed more than $2.6 Bn of capital in over 190 companies. It announced its eighth pool of capital of $670 Mn in April 2022. 

Co-led by managing partners Ravi Adusumalli and Mukul Arora, along with partners Mridul Arora, Mayank Khanduja, Vaas Bhaskar and Chirag Chadha, the VC firm claims to have a portfolio of over 200 companies including 14 unicorns and 9 publicly listed startups. Its key investments include companies like Swiggy, Meesho, ShareChat, and Urban Company, among others.

This appointment comes over a month after the venture capital firm has strengthened its leadership team with three elevations. In October, Elevation promoted its principals Vaas Bhaskar and Chirag Chadha to the positions of partners and vice president Ashray Iyengar to principal. 

The VC firm also made various key investments and exits this year.

For instance, the VC firm recently led the seed funding round of  $3.6 Mn at wealthtech startup Infinyte.Club.

In June, Elevation Capital was in talks to join Gold loan provider Rupeek’s cap table as a part of INR 200 Cr funding round.

Not just this, the investment company also led a $5 Mn funding round at D2C sneaker brand Comet.

Talking on the exit front, Elevation Capital exited online travel aggregator ixigo with 13X returns ahead of the startup’s IPO in June