Elevar Equity

One of the original founders of Elevar Equity.

Steve Hardgrave co-founded Varthana, a company that provides loans to affordable private schools in India, which he and Brajesh Mishra developed in 2013 out of Elevar Equity's Bangalore office. His background includes rural financial services and involvement in launching the Indian School Finance Company. Varthana has provided over 40,000 loans to more than 11,000 school entrepreneurs.

Amie Patel is a Partner at Elevar Equity, where she leads the firm's organizational and operating functions, including talent, strategy, business development, and LP and co-investor relations. She previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (which acquired Imprint Capital) on ESG and impact investing in emerging markets, the Soros Economic Development Fund on early to growth stage investments, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation as an Investment Funds Officer, and began her career as an M&A analyst at Merrill Lynch and First Union Securities. She holds an MBA from Georgetown University and a BS in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis.

Mexico-born Johanna Gil Posada uses operational microfinance experience in Latin America to bridge microfinance and tech-enabled inclusion, focusing on companies embedding finance into daily life for low- and lower-middle-income users.

Shobha Venkataraman is a Partner at Elevar Equity, where she leads the firm's finance, fund administration, back office operations, compliance, and reporting. She has over 15 years of experience in private equity fund administration, having previously worked at Toucan Capital, PEF Services, and Treeline Business Solutions. She holds an MBA from Drexel University and a Master's in Commerce from the University of Madras.

Aneesh Patnaik is a Senior Advisor at Elevar with a background in strategic partnerships and talent acquisition, and is a founding member of EPIC World. He was previously a Partner at Vahura, a legal search and consulting firm, where he remains on the Advisory Board, and earlier practiced law in the chambers of Dr. Abhishek Singhvi, appearing before the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts. He holds a law degree from Symbiosis Law School, Pune.

Arpit Shah is an Advisor at Elevar with over a decade of experience across private equity and consulting. He previously served as Senior Manager of Investor Relations at True North, an Indian private equity firm, and as a Manager at Grant Thornton India LLP, where he worked on deal valuations, structuring, and transaction analysis. He is a Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, has cleared CFA Level II, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai University.

Dilip James has served as a Senior Advisor to Elevar Equity since 2022, bringing over 35 years of management experience in retail, distribution, and IT-enabled consumer and service businesses. He was previously a venture partner and strategic advisor at Accel, Executive VP & COO at Reliance Retail, and held CXO-level roles at RPG group companies Spencer and Saregama, where he helped establish early organized retail formats in India. He co-founded network infrastructure company Netsol, which was acquired by IBM Global Services in 2005, and holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT (BHU).

Jyotsna Krishnan coined India's unseen middle—a 300–400 million-person segment—and uniquely combines her managing partner role with being CEO of EPIC World, using household-mapping data to prioritize entrepreneurial households.

Manish Dabir is a Senior Advisor at Elevar with roughly three decades of experience in the financial sector, covering capital formation, investment strategies, and corporate finance. He has held senior roles at global investment banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and CLSA, and at the Aditya Birla Group, with experience across equity, debt, mezzanine, and structured finance. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce with honours from Shri Ram College of Commerce.

Ramaraj is an entrepreneur with ventures in IT, cellular technology, and the Internet, most recently co-founding and serving as CEO of Sify, the first Indian Internet company to list on NASDAQ. Before joining Elevar as Senior Advisor in 2014, he was a Senior Advisor at Sequoia Capital. He holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the University of Madras and an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Sandeep Farias pioneered the entrepreneurial households thesis, backing 40–50 million micro-entrepreneurial families in underserved emerging markets and created the Low ARPU, High Wallet Share framework for essential recurring household services.

Vipul Rawal is a Partner at Elevar Equity and a founding team member at EPIC World, leading the firm's work in India and Latin America on customer data and insights, portfolio analytics, fund performance tracking, and market intelligence. He has over 16 years of experience across agri commodity trading, emerging markets investing, and investment banking. Before Elevar, he managed a fund at Tholons Capital and worked in Goldman Sachs's Investment Banking Division within the Financial Institutions Group. He holds an MBA in Finance and Marketing and a B.Sc. in Physics, Mathematics, and Electronics.