Founders
How Akshay Chaturvedi Built Leverage Edu After an Investor Said No
Akshay Chaturvedi had quit his job and moved back into his parents’ home in Delhi. He scraped together ₹2,500 to ₹3,000 for a SpiceJet ticket to Bengaluru, because one investor was waiting there and he wanted to meet him.
The investor did not commit.
Akshay walked out into the heat. His nose began to bleed, as it had since childhood. He stood on the street, a long way from home, holding a “no.”
He had started Leverage Edu in 2017, and in those early years the rooms he walked into kept telling him the same thing. Investors compared Akshay Chaturvedi to founders from elite backgrounds, and he did not fit the picture they carried in their heads.
The numbers told a different story. Leverage Edu was already making ₹4 lakh a month. A rival had made ₹8 lakh in a whole year.
Then the angel investor Kashyap Deorah offered Akshay ₹10 lakh. That offer changed things for him and for Leverage Edu.
In June 2023, another test arrived. The investor leading a new funding round pulled out, days before 550 people were due to be paid. Akshay does not look for someone else to blame. “We did not understand cash flow enough,” he admits.
Today, Leverage Edu stands far from that bedroom in Delhi. The company earned ₹372 Cr in revenue in FY26 and has set a target of ₹600 Cr for FY27. It plans an IPO within 18 months. It has helped more than 1,55,000 students study abroad, and it works with more than 850 partner universities.
When Akshay Chaturvedi looks back, the story does not turn on the “no” in Bengaluru. It turns on what came after. Rejection did not decide how his story would go. What he did the next morning did.
So think back to your own first “no.” What did you do the morning after? Tell us in the comments.
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