Elevar Equity: the human-centred fund building for India's underserved billions

Elevar Equity is a human-centred venture capital firm that has spent nearly two decades betting on one big idea: that the world's most underserved customers — the low-income, entrepreneurial households of India and Latin America — deserve products designed around their lives, not hand-me-down versions of someone else's. Founded in 2008 by Chris Brookfield, Johanna Posada, Maya Chorengel and Sandeep Farias, Elevar pioneered private equity investing in the Indian and Latin American microfinance sector before most global investors would touch it.

The firm's investment thesis is deceptively simple: fuel the economic resilience and vibrancy of underserved customers and entrepreneurial households by investing early growth capital in entrepreneurs building at the intersection of inclusivity, affordability and massive scale. This is the Elevar Method — a ground-up approach that starts with the customer's wallet and cash flows, then follows them into ever-more-sophisticated services. The firm says its method has democratised essential services for over 20 million underserved customers and catalysed billions of dollars of capital into more than 30 companies.

Elevar's investment arc tells the story of its customer base maturing. Its first fund was purely focused on microfinance, backing pioneers like SKS, Ujjivan and Madura Microfinance. As entrepreneurial households showed readiness for more, the firm systematically expanded: first into affordable housing finance and small-business lending, then into education, healthcare, agriculture and MSME services. Today it invests across financial services, agriculture, education, healthcare and housing, with a focus on early-stage and early-growth companies in India and Latin America.

The portfolio reads like a map of the Indian inclusion economy. It includes Coverfox, the insurtech that pivoted to a distribution-as-a-service model embedding affordable insurance products through microfinance institutions; CureBay, a phygital healthcare platform bringing primary care to rural India's doorstep through eClinics; StrideOne, a tech-led financial services platform for startups and MSME supply chains; SarvaGram, the rural household finance company; Niro, the embedded lending platform; Nia.one, the worker-infrastructure platform for India's gig workforce; Samunnati, the agri value-chain financier; and Nuvemshop (Nuvem Shop), the Latin American MSME e-commerce enabler.

On the leadership front, Jyotsna Krishnan, Managing Partner, leads the firm's investing strategy and priorities in India and drives overall fund performance globally; she is also a co-founder of EPIC World, Elevar's affiliated data platform that maps tens of millions of entrepreneurial households to inform investment decisions. Founder and Managing Director Chris Brookfield and co-founder Sandeep Farias round out the senior team. The firm works closely with development finance institutions — British International Investment has committed $10 million to Elevar India V — and past vehicles include the $70 million Elevar Equity II fund. Total assets under management are not publicly disclosed.

For founders, the practical takeaway is this: Elevar is not a speed-dating VC. The firm prides itself on teaming with entrepreneurs over the long haul — helping define the customer insight, building operational systems that scale impact, and staying invested as the thesis compounds. If your startup builds for the economic upside of underserved households — affordable finance, health, education, agri or housing — Elevar's door is genuinely open, and its customer-research muscle is arguably as valuable as its chequebook.