Aviral Bhatnagar Secures INR 100 Cr In His Maiden Fund

SUMMARY

The fund aims to exercise a greenshoe option to raise another INR 50 Cr

The VC firm has so far backed nine pre-seed stage startups that are currently in stealth mode, some of which are based in Assam and Jharkhand

A former lead investor in SaaS, consumer, and AI sectors at Venture Highway, Bhatnagar launched AJVC in August last year

A Junior VC (AJVC), a venture capital fund launched by former Venture Highway executive Aviral Bhatnagar, has closed its first INR 100 Cr fund targeting pre-seed investments in India.

The fund aims to exercise a greenshoe option to raise another INR 50 Cr.

“We are actively considering exercising our greenshoe option given the overwhelming interest in the fund,” Bhatnagar told Inc42.

A former lead investor in SaaS, consumer, and AI sectors at Venture Highway, Bhatnagar launched AJVC in August last year.

Bhatnagar, who had left the VC firm in April, identified a significant gap in India’s pre-seed ecosystem, where many founders struggle to raise their first round of funding.

Back then, he said, “….I aim to bring the decade-long learnings as an investor supporting startups to build AJVC.”

The fund is primarily made up of domestic capital, and its partners include Indian family offices, founders of Indian tech unicorns and executives at large investment firms.

The VC firm has so far backed nine pre-seed stage startups that are currently in stealth mode, some of which are based in Assam and Jharkhand across sectors including five investments in artificial intelligence, two in D2C brands, one in business-to-business, and one in consumer tech business, Bhatnagar further said.

He added that the firm uses a technology driven process to respond to startups in a turnaround time of less than 35 hours for the first round.

This development comes at a time when funding winter seems to have come close to an end with the growing number of investors developing an interest to back early-stage startups.

For instance, PE firm JV Ventures’ life sciences-focussed arm Innovation Acceleration Platform (IXP) launched its first fund, a few weeks ago, to invest in early stage startups in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical technology, speciality chemicals, agrotechnology, and nutraceuticals. The fund, IXP Lifesciences Catalyst Fund, has a target corpus of INR 200 Cr, with a greenshoe option of INR 100 Cr.

Prior to that, Prudent Investment Managers floated a fund of INR 500 Cr (about $57.8 Mn) to invest in 10-15 startups with initial cheques of INR 30 Cr to INR 50 Cr each.