Elevation Kickstarter: New Frontiers in Marketplaces
India’s online retail spending is estimated to reach $200 billion in 2025 and continue growing at a rapid clip. An impressive >80% of this is directed through marketplaces. They are the heart of the digital economy.
At Elevation, our definition of marketplaces goes beyond just traditional e-commerce businesses connecting buyers and sellers of physical goods. We’ve had a ringside view of the evolution of this model to include a wide range of products, services, and everything in between. We have been huge believers in the power of marketplaces and have among the deepest portfolio in the space, backing many category-definers in the earliest stages. Swiggy (food), Urban Company (home services), BookMyShow (ticketing), Spinny (cars), MakeMyTrip and Ixigo (travel), and NoBroker (home rentals), to name a few.
We partnered with Swiggy when they were only a few weeks old and were live only in Koramangala. We entered Urban Company in 2014, when the first version of their website was less than 30 days old. UC is today one of the biggest services marketplaces and we believe more marketplaces will get built out in services.
We have discussed our framework for building successful platform businesses and how some exciting upcoming themes fall into place within that here.
After the overwhelming response to our Kickstarter on the future of consumer marketplaces in Bengaluru, we are back with another edition - this time in Gurugram.
Join Mukul Arora (Co-Managing Partner, Elevation) and Abhiraj Singh Bhal (Co-Founder, Urban Company) for an evening of discussions on the scope of services marketplaces in India, intricacies particular to such platforms, our framework for founders, and the spaces of excitement.
Networking over dinner and drinks with key builders in this space will follow!