The $250B Business Expense Nobody's Been Managing Until Now | Ande on Lightwork

Corporate entertainment is a massive category, but booking client dinners, team events, sports outings, catering, and merchandise is still fragmented across countless systems and vendors.

Ande CEO and co-founder Lohit Sarma joins Lightwork to explain how the company is building an operating system for corporate entertainment. He breaks down why Ande spent more than two years building its network before coming out of stealth, how the company works with hospitality providers and enterprise procurement teams, and why AI is embedded across both its product and internal operations.

Sarma also discusses Ande’s network of more than 1,600 hospitality groups, its rollout across 60 large enterprises, the company’s goal of routing roughly $400 million through the platform by year-end, and what he believes it will take to scale that network 10x.

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

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The $250B Business Expense Nobody's Been Managing Until Now