The founder began looking for internal validation after being betrayed by a VC. His journey has been shaped by countless lessons in learning and unlearning. Can he now script a new chapter by taking the study-abroad platform to IPO?
June 2020, Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It was one of the Saturdays. Akshay Chaturvedi vividly remembers the day, month, incident and the lesson. The first wave of pandemic had intensified—schools and colleges had shifted to the online mode of teaching—and a similar gloomy scenario was playing out across the world. In the four months since the onset of Covid, Chaturvedi’s dream had been painfully crashing at an alarming pace. LeverageEdu, the study-abroad edtech platform which the first-time founder started in 2017, was staring at an uncertain future.