Aviral Bhatnagar

ajvc

Investing in Indian pre-seed startups - if you're building a startup please apply at ajuniorvc.com

Founder and Managing Partner

Built a platform for deeply researched opinions & enabling entrepreneurs that evolved into AJVC - the Fund

Founder

Venture Highway LLP

Led investments in SaaS, consumer and AI. Managed and built the student venture program.

Investor

Guild Capital

Set up the India investing practice and focused on early-stage/venture investments

Morgan Stanley

Private equity summer internship with large infra-asset focus

Stealth Startup

Built two startups while in college at IITB. Award-winning startups focused on opening career options for Tier 2 city students and science learning

Co-Founder

I am the Founder and Managing Partner of ajvc, a pre-seed fund investing in Indian startups

If you want to connect with the fund for a company you've started, please apply at ajuniorvc.com. If you would like to speak with me, reach out at aviral@ajuniorvc.com

I graduated top of class from IIM Ahmedabad and built my first few startups at IIT Bombay

Making startup conversations more accessible - find out more at ajuniorvc.com

My personal principles:

1. Health > Family > Career
2. Optimists make money, pessimists sound smart
3. Work as long as I can, never retire
4. Purpose over money
5. Courage is rare, show it
6. Empathy is rarer, feel it
7. Take risks, life is short
8. Be thoughtful, life is long
9. Attitude > Aptitude
10. Share as much as you can
11. Write for yourself, before others
12. Respond to all thoughtful people
13. Live below your means, learn above your means
14. Money is a scoreboard, not a goal
15. Good things take time
16. Don’t stop, keep going
17. Support people who want to make a difference
18. Things come down as fast as they go up
19. Choose slowly, commit wholly, execute rapidly 
20. Give back as you’re privileged
21. If you try to make everyone happy, you never will be

Startups are increasingly using Zoho over Google for a lot of products

Not just GMail, but also Drive, Looker and Forms are being replaced

Founders find Zoho products much easier to use an economical, something that wasn't true before

Zoho is transforming into a heavy hitter

One of the biggest enablers in your professional life is a lack of drama in your personal life

Investing in startups at ajuniorvc.com

All of the following is true about India:

200 billionaires, 200 million in poverty
5 IMO medals, just 5% get degrees
1st in cricket, just 1 gold per Olympics
1st in digital payments, only 1/2 has internet
5th largest eco, 150th per capita

Disappoints optimists and pessimists

1.5L/month is more than enough to live well anywhere in India

If you want more than being in the top 1% and add luxuries like foreign vacations, take it to 2L/month

You can cover this with 5% each year on a ~4.8Cr corpus, the remaining returns compound

More is good, not need

Deepinder backed LAT Aerospace with $20M, Continue with $25M

When the government looks down upon grocery/food delivery, they aren't thinking 10 years ahead  

Zomato in 2015 enabled moonshots in 2025

India's deep tech innovation is coming from founders who built delivery apps

LG is a case study of how foreign brands build in India:

- ₹11,607 Cr IPO, 55x subscribed
- 2 big factories in Noida/Pune
- 50% of materials from Indian suppliers
- 35,000+ dealer touchpoints
- ₹24,367 Cr revenue, ₹2,203 Cr profit

Ford/GM left, LG/Hyundai/Suzuki thrived

Jane Street made $13B of profit from 3,000 employees, while legendary Goldman Sachs made $14B from 45,000

Tech-rich JS made $4M per employee, while legacy-rich GS made $0.3M

JS has been a heavy user of AI/ML for years, and the very top talent is going to be turbocharged with AI

Blinkit Revenue in Cr:

FY22: 236
FY23: 724
FY24: 1,064
FY25: 5,206
FY26: 10,000+ (annualized)

Zomato's stock price fell by 4,500 Cr when it acquired Blinkit for 4,500 Cr in FY22

Grown 50x in revenue from then in 4 years, probably worth 1L Cr now

Incredible acquisition

PS: These are based on the commissions they make and not the inventory model - 10,000 Cr is 4 quarters of commissions at 2,500 Cr

In the past 1 year:

- Silver: 93% ↑
- Bitcoin: 85% ↑
- Gold: 63% ↑
- NIFTY: 0%

All those who went long only equity will learn portfolio diversification

India's luxury capital isn't Bangalore's tech hub or Mumbai's billionaire row, but a 5 sq km diplomatic accident in South Delhi

Bangalore has 12,000+ dollar millionaires 
Mumbai has 92 billionaires

Yet 40%+ of India's luxury retail, Hermès, Chanel, Rolex clusters, in just two locations that lies in one place: South Delhi's diplomatic belt

It defies every rule of retail economics. Luxury typically follows wealth and depth of consumption, rather than bureaucratic zoning

Delhi began with neither

In 1953, India designated Chanakyapuri as an area for embassies. The UK got the first pick. The US got the second. Wide avenues. Strict zoning. Zero commercial chaos. Embassies brought diplomats. Diplomats brought international footfall. International footfall attracted exclusivity

By 2008, DLF bet on this frozen geography. Emporio opened in Vasant Kunj, 2 km from the diplomatic core. 70 international brands. Armani, Cartier, Dior settled in. 

Not solely because of wealth, but also because of proximity to power

The Chanakya followed in 2018. Opposite the Chanakyapuri Post Office, you can find Hermès' flagship store and North India's only Rolex Boutique. Events for ambassadors became brand strategy

Today, South Delhi houses DLF Emporio (170 brands) and The Chanakya (50+ luxury brands), comprising 200+ stores within a 5 sq km area. Due to this oddity, North India holds 40% of India's $10 Bn luxury market

No wonder Delhi ranked 1 in luxury spending, ahead of Mumbai

Mumbai has wealth, Bangalore has new money, but they lack what 70 years of a diplomatic zoning accident created

Artificial scarcity and imported legitimacy powers luxury

Truth is that money can solve most problems in India, if not all

If you have ~2 Cr wealth - rent in a nice society, stay close to office, put kids in a good school, avoid traffic most days, buy most things needed

Would need to be a $ millionaire to have the same life in the US

Haldiram's is an incredible story:  

Founded in 1937 as a family shop 
Split into 3 in 90s, unified in 2000s
$2Bn+ revenue, 80+ countries today
$200MM+ profit, $10B valn
Bigger than Pepsi; McD + Dominos in India  

Built for India, selling to the world

Reliance has 51x more stores, but DMart makes 12x more profit per store

-DMart: 365 stores, ₹2,536 Cr profit, ₹7 Cr profit per store
- Reliance Retail: 18,774 stores, ₹11,101 Cr profit, ₹0.6 Cr profit per store

Boring grocer outperforms the conglomerate on efficiency

Ambrane started as a small mobile shop in 2012, and is now touching 400 Cr of revenue

What's incredible is that it's entirely bootstrapped, profitable and loved for power banks

3 Cr customers in a highly competitive category is amazing

Many such 100x stories quietly around us

IIM Ahmedabad background top 10 unicorns:

Nykaa ($5B) 
PolicyBazaar ($4B) 
FirstCry ($3B) 
BharatPe ($3B) 
Innovaccer ($3B) 
InfraMarket ($2B) 
Urban Company ($2B) 
ElasticRun ($2B) 
XpressBees ($1B) 
BigBasket ($1B)

16 unicorns, $27B+ valuation, 2 public cos, all from 1 B-school

MBAs can create giant companies unlike the myth of them not being entrepreneurs

Happy Diwali to everyone, especially to those away from their homes making our Diwali brighter.

These are folks quietly delivering things we bought online, managing food, driving our cabs, flying us, running stores, taking care of our health and much more. They tirelessly do their jobs to help us celebrate our Diwali’s, usually going unnoticed in the celebrations.

Let us take out some time to thank them specially, and make them feel part of our Diwalis.

Wishing everyone a healthy, happy and prosperous year ahead!

A small cart from Ahmedabad created the 1,000 Cr Havmor brand, with the family now audaciously re-attempting ice cream glory with Hocco: 

- Satish Chona made ice cream creatively on a cart in Karachi in 1944
- Post-Partition, lost everything struggled in Dehra Dun and Indore trying to sell ice cream
- Moved to Ahmedabad, sold from pushcart outside the railway station
- Ice cream finally worked with customer wanting to “Have more”, becoming Havmor
- Sales allowed to opened first shop on Relief Road with basement factory in 1953
- Quality, taste and feeling was paramount, which Satish Chona perfected 
- Son Pradeep took over, modernised manufacturing and added speed through the 1980s
- Built Havmor to 35% Gujarat share, 12.5% nationally by 2010s
- Turned down acquisition offers, finally sold to South Korea's Lotte for ₹1,020 Cr in 2017
- Grandson Ankit studied at Purdue, worked at Panera Bread in the US, came back
- Launched premium brand Huber & Holly in 2016, kept it post-sale
- Non-compete of 5 years started in 2017 with the 70-year legacy of ice cream gone
- Could have retired with the acquisition, yet kept the fire burning to create Hocco
- Went live in October 2023, just as quick commerce was taking off
- Put 70% of money into GPS-tracked cold chain, not marketing
- Went from 40,000 litres to 1.3 lakh litres a day in 2 years
- Launched 150+ products while Amul, HUL, Vadilal watched
- Did ₹32 Cr in FY24, ₹220 Cr in FY25, targeting 600 Cr in FY26, 20x in 3 years 
- Targeting 1,000 Cr of revenue in 2028, goal to be bigger than Havmor
- Raised money at ₹600 Cr in June 2024, then ₹2,000 Cr in September 2025
- Became the fastest growing ice cream brand in the country
- Got to 15,000 touchpoints, put 1,400 pushcarts just in Delhi NCR
- Sits at # 4 now with 33 others competing
- Plans 3 lakh litres a day by next summer, targeting ₹700 Cr for the year

With the epic 80 year story of resilience in the my comment, Hocco could be sweet victory in the Chona family’s second ice cream innings

If you want to connect - reach out at aviral@venturehighway.vc

Join our platform on ajuniorvc.com - in case you want to know more write to aviral@ajuniorvc.com
Tweet at https://twitter.com/aviralbhat

Always learning about startups+investing+business building+storytelling

Graduated from IIM Ahmedabad ('16) and IIT Bombay ('14) where I spent time on startup tinkering, understanding businesses, storytelling and learning a way of life.

Harshada Juikar

In villages in Jharkhand and Odisha, women quietly label millions of data points that power models for OpenAI, Tesla and Google

India’s data-annotation industry is growing at nearly 30% annually, and could go $7B+ by 2030

Feeding the algorithm is a new, lucrative IT service

GDP PPP Per Capita in India's Big 9:

1. Mumbai: $39K
2. Pune: $33K
3. Kolkata: $32K
4. Delhi: $29K
5. Bangalore: $27K
6. Ahmedabad: $26K
7. Hyderabad: $25K
8. Surat: $25K
9. Chennai: $24K

9 account for just 10% of population, but 40% of India's GDP 

Rich mini countries

taplio

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