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Debjyoti PaulManaging Director

Paul is Managing Director at Elevar and is a core part of the India investment team. He brings to the Elevar portfolio his background in scaling businesses profitably through go-to-market and business model innovations, together with the use of technology, data & AI to solve customer problems uniquely. 

Paul has 26 years of business leadership experience in the new age digital technology space. He has shaped the digital transformation journeys for some of the most ambitious organizations worldwide to help drive growth and profitability. In his last corporate role, he led Digital Services for ITC Infotech as President. He has held leadership roles at Microsoft, Mindtree, Infosys and Sify. He has also had a short stint as an early-stage entrepreneur and co-founder in ShopAsULike.com, which later became BigBasket.com.

Paul redirected his career at the 25 year mark to focus on helping scale startups, coaching entrepreneurs and solving social impact problems. Elevar’s deep understanding of this space and of customers in low income, underserved communities captivated his imagination and he is deeply excited to leverage this platform for scalable impact.     

Paul holds an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur and a B.Tech. in Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Paul is also a trained Leadership and Executive Coach. 

Whenever possible, Paul likes to withdraw from action for 2-3 days and spend time in seclusion for reading and inward explorations. At other times, he energizes himself by connecting with family and a strong network of friends.    

What kind of experience did you have before Elevar?

Most of my career has been about understanding customer needs, designing solutions at the intersection of design, creativity, technology, data and AI to create business propositions that can scale into profitable enterprises. A lot of my work has also been about creating high performance teams and helping them succeed.

What makes for a good Elevarian?

‘Customer-focused’, ‘with a heart and sincerity of purpose’ creating a great ‘smell of the place’ – entrepreneurial, disciplined, supportive, driven by trust. 

Has working with Elevar changed your perspective on things?

I have learnt early on at Elevar, that impact investing is far more ‘impactful’ when investors are as deeply invested in the end-customer as the entrepreneur.

How is Elevar different from the jobs you’ve done before?

I have worked only on building businesses in the past. Elevar is where I am bringing that experience and grounding to investing.