Access engine

FROM A REJECTED OFFER LETTER TO A FULL-STACK PLATFORM THAT TRIES TO MAKE GLOBAL MOBILITY PREDICTABLE RATHER THAN PRIVILEGED

- S SHANTHI

THE IDEA BEHIND edtech firm Leverage did not emerge from a pitch deck or a market gap analysis. It came from a rejection that felt personal.

In his early 20s, Akshay Chaturvedi had secured admission to Oxford University's Saïd Business School, only to realise that the tuition fee-over£60,000 -put the offer firmly out of reach. The admission letter arrived. The celebration followed. The calculation ended the dream."It felt like failure,"he says."Only later did I understand that it was really about access - who gets it and who doesn't."

That moment stayed with him. Chaturvedi had already spent years experimenting with small ventures. At nine, he ran an evening club from his government housing society in Delhi, charging children ₹100 a week to read comics, play Prince of Persia on a home-assembled computer or watch the Disney channel. In school and college, he organised large "conti parties" across Delhi and later ran a small export initiative linked to an NGO through his AIESEC network. The ventures were modest, but the lessons were not: fix supply before demand, watch cash flows closely, and do mental math before taking risk.

The Oxford rejection gave those instincts direction. During his MBA at ISB Hyderabad in 2014, where he served as director of the student board, Chaturvedi began studying the economics of higher education and global mobility. The early insight was simple, that aspiration was abundant, but information, financing and trustworthy guidance were fragmented.