Ande

The future of corporate entertainment begins here.

[Ande @weareande]

How do we look?

[Josh Machiz @Machiz]

corporate entertainment is about bringing people together, but the systems behind it are surprisingly scattered.

lohit built @weareande to bring it all into one place and reduce headaches for the teams involved

@keepingittlo and i go way back, and i’ve had a front row seat to the way he builds

he cares deeply about the human side of hospitality. early on, he went door-to-door meeting with hospitality groups while building ande

this week, we talked about how ande is using AI to remove logistical frictions without automating the humanity that makes hospitality work.

[Claire Zau @clairejyz]

BREAKING: ANDE COMES OUT OF STEALTH WITH $52M

@keepingittlo (CEO & Co-founder of @weareande) joined us Lightwork to break down the corporate entertainment network he spent the last two and a half years building in stealth.

📈 60 enterprises, 1,600+ hospitality groups, and 93,000+ venues
🍽️ Why he believes corporate entertainment never got a Concur/Navan-style solution
⚡ Ande’s “10x cheaper, 10x faster” approach through AI-native ops
🤝 Why Ande keeps humans in the loop for negotiations

Full episode linked below 👇
@Lightspeed

[Ande @weareande]

@Machiz @keepingittlo Let's do this 💚

[Lightspeed @lightspeedvp]

While corporate travel has been centralized for decades, corporate entertainment is still comparatively scattered.

On Lightwork, Lohit Sarma shared how he approached that problem at @weareande: start with supply.

He spent the last two and a half years building the network from that side first, including going door to door with hospitality groups before scaling the enterprise side.

Corporate entertainment still runs on relationships. AI can handle things like availability, pricing, and multi-player workflows, but Lohit draws the line at negotiation.

As he puts it, “one bad event is one lost relationship that they can’t recover from.”

Tune into the full episode below!

Chapters:
0:00 Ande Comes Out Of Stealth
2:17 Why Corporate Entertainment Has Stayed Fragmented
4:51 Lohit Sarma's Background (Lifion by ADP)
9:51 What CFOs Revealed About Fraud And Offshore Teams
10:47 Building The Supply Side First
16:44 Ande's Enterprise Customers And Rollout Strategy
18:40 How AI Is Built Into Ande's Ethos
22:58 The Future Of Ande
26:11 Hiring A Team To Build A Category
29:38 What Can Break At Ten Times The Size
31:50 Celebrating The Launch And Where To Find Ande

@keepingittlo @clairejyz @machiz

[alex bard @alexbard]

So excited to finally share what Lohit, Tal, Michael and the entire @weareande team have been building.

Corporate entertainment is a massive category that somehow still runs on fragmented tools, spreadsheets and a lot of manual work. Ande is changing that - building the network and operating system that connects companies with the venues and experiences where relationships are built, teams come together and business gets done.

They’ve already built an incredible network and are powering more than $400M in annual entertainment spend and they’re just getting started.

Proud to be part of the journey and incredibly excited for the adventure ahead. Congrats Lohit and team! 🚀🎉 cc @Redpoint

[avarma @avarma]

Congrats Lohit and the team on the official launch of @weareande 🎉

I first heard about Ande over dinner, and I immediately heard the passion in his voice and body language. That kind of conviction is contagious.

Corporate entertainment is broken. It's a problem every company runs into, and somehow no one's solved it well. Solving it takes the right founder and the right partner behind them, and here you've got two fellow Waterloo grads, Lohit Sarma and Arif Janmohamed, teaming up to go after something everyone needs.

Watching Lohit build in stealth has been exciting, but the launch today is really just the start of the next chapter of the next phase of brand and customer growth.

Excited to watch what's next 🚀

[Ande @weareande]

@Redpoint 💚🫡

[Ande @weareande]

Meet Ande.

Ande is the AI-native network for corporate entertainment, connecting the enterprises that book with the vendors that serve them.

$400M of dinners, suites, and gifting already runs through it, across 93,000 vendors in 90+ cities.

One network. Both sides win.