Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC closes maiden fund at over Rs 200 cr to back pre-seed startups

Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC closes maiden fund at over Rs 200 crore to back pre-seed startups

Pre-seed venture capital firm AJVC, founded by Aviral Bhatnagar, has closed its maiden fund at over Rs 200 crore, more than double its original target of Rs 100 crore.

The fund achieved the milestone in just nine months since its launch in September 2024, with backing from global institutional investors and leading family offices.

AJVC has already invested in 25 startups across AI and consumer technology and plans to back 60–70 more teams from this fund. The firm says it has received over 11,000 founder applications spanning 50 cities, 6,000 colleges and 4,000 companies, positioning it as one of India’s most active pre-seed investors.

The fund has built its model on speed and transparency in early-stage investing, with an average first response time of 30 hours to founder pitches. Alongside capital, AJVC provides structured resources worth Rs 4 crore, a community of over 600,000 members, and programs designed to accelerate customer acquisition.

“We are deeply grateful to our LPs for their trust. India is witnessing an unprecedented wave of first-time entrepreneurs. Meeting their ambition requires venture capital to operate at an entirely new velocity,” said Bhatnagar.

The oversubscribed close, according to AJVC, highlights growing investor appetite for faster, tech-enabled venture processes at the pre-seed stage in India’s startup ecosystem.

This comes at a time when venture capital fundraising in India has picked up after a year-long lull. The total capital raised by VCs in 2025 so far, at over $3.2 billion, has already surpassed the $2.7 billion raised in the whole of 2024.

The list of recent fund closes includes large foreign investors such as Accel and Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as domestic names like Elev8 Venture Partners, Prime Venture Partners and Cornerstone VC. Several other firms are in advanced talks to close funds later this year, Moneycontrol reported earlier.

With its oversubscribed debut, AJVC signals that investor interest is shifting earlier in the funding cycle, as global and domestic LPs look to tap India’s expanding base of first-time founders. The close underlines how pre-seed capital is becoming institutionalised, setting the stage for a deeper pipeline of venture-backed startups.