Dhawal Shah

Dhawal Shah is an entrepreneur and business executive with a background spanning franchising, digital business development, marketing, venture investing, and decentralized finance. He is Founder and CEO of Elsa AI, having previously co-founded Frontier and held venture and strategic advisory roles at Bison Fund and Woodstock Fund. ^[6]

Education

Shah earned his Bachelor of Management Studies in Finance and Digital Marketing from Narsee Monjee. ^[1]

Career

Shah began his career at the Franchising Association of India, where he served as Deputy Executive Officer from 2006 to 2008 and worked on client relations, training programs, team development, and new product and service initiatives. In 2009, he founded Maverick Franchise Ventures, where he built Way2Franchise, a web-based franchise directory for the Indian market, and worked across sales, marketing, advertising, digital strategy, and lead generation. From 2013 to 2015, he served as Regional Director at Quiznos Global, supporting franchise development, country marketing plans, digital initiatives, customer journey analysis, and IT infrastructure across its Indian operations.

From 2016 to 2017, Shah was Franchise Development Director at the Middle East and North Africa Franchise Association, where he managed a team and strategic relationships supporting franchise brands in the UAE. He then joined CedarBridge Capital Partners as Franchise Manager in 2017, where he worked on franchise growth strategies, partner relationships, market expansion, and operational development until 2020. During this period, he also became a Strategic Advisor at Frontier and later a Co-Founder and Venture Partner at Woodstock Fund, where he was involved with early-stage distributed ledger technology companies and liquid tokens.

Shah co-founded Unifrontier Technologies, the company behind Frontier, in 2020 and served as Chief Business Officer until December 2022, focusing on business development, partnerships, and alliances for its cross-chain DeFi aggregation platform. He was also a Seed Investor at Bison Fund from November 2021 to October 2024, investing in early-stage Web3 companies. In March 2024, he founded Elsa AI, where he serves as CEO and works on an AI-powered assistant for cryptocurrency transactions and asset management. ^[2]

Interviews

Crypto’s Rise

In a January 2026 interview on the When Shift Happens podcast, Shah discussed his entrepreneurial background, the lessons he learned from building and managing early ventures, and his transition from crypto wallets to artificial intelligence. He described the challenges of developing Frontier Wallet and explained how onboarding users and navigating cryptocurrency products led to the development of Elsa, an AI-powered crypto co-pilot designed to assist with onboarding, transactions, and portfolio management. Shah discussed Elsa's use of OpenAI AI models and its focus on combining artificial intelligence with decentralized financial infrastructure, while emphasizing product utility, user adoption, and long-term development. He also discussed the broader relationship between AI and cryptocurrency, including the role of major AI companies and the potential use of a token within Elsa's ecosystem. The interview concluded with Shah discussing his long-term outlook for the cryptocurrency market and the importance of continued research and building for long-term adoption. ^[5]

Shah’s Journey with AI

In a May 2025 interview on the Hive Hub Podcast, Shah discussed his entrepreneurial background and the development of Elsa AI. He described his transition from franchising into investment banking and later into Web3 ventures, including Woodstock and Frontier, and explained how challenges with the complexity of cryptocurrency platforms influenced the creation of Elsa. Shah said Elsa was designed to combine AI and crypto to simplify onboarding and common activities such as managing gas fees, private keys, transactions, and other aspects of using onchain applications, with voice interaction developed to reduce the need for manual processes. He also discussed plans to expand Elsa's multichain support and integrate additional decentralized applications, as well as early partner support and the challenges of fundraising, emphasizing product development, persistence, and networking. ^[3]

Presentations

Elsa AI

In an October 2025 demo at Toronto DAO, Shah introduced Elsa as an AI-powered platform designed to simplify interactions with decentralized finance applications. He described the complexity created by multiple blockchains, wallets, and tokens and explained that Elsa uses a natural-language interface to abstract these processes, initially supporting eight chains. Shah demonstrated use cases including staking, swapping, lending, borrowing, bridging, token creation, portfolio management, and limit orders, along with features such as multi-protocol staking, leverage, stop-loss orders, and safeguards intended to reduce user errors. He explained that Elsa used OpenAI models for intent orchestration and onchain tool calling, connecting to more than 65 APIs, while token databases and model fine-tuning addressed hallucinations and improved transaction accuracy and speed. The demo also covered Elsa's transaction-fee model, which ranged from 0.2% to 0.39% depending on usage, as well as its token research and portfolio creation capabilities. ^[4]