Aviral Bhatnagar's AJVC Closes Debut Fund At INR 200 Cr

Former Venture Highway executive Aviral Bhatnagar’s investment venture A Junior VC (AJVC) has closed its debut AIF fund AJVC Trust at INR 200 Cr, about six months after marking the first close of the fund.

Without disclosing the names of investors participating in the fund, Bhatnagar told Inc42 that global institutional investors, top-tier family offices in India, high net-worth individuals (HNIs) and founders of startups have backed the fund.

Bhatnagar said that AJVC has invested in 25 startups so far via the fund, across sectors such as SaaS, AI, consumer tech, consumer brands as well as B2B. Most recently, AJVC backed packaged Bihari foods startup Mithila Foods in August. The VC firm invests INR 1.5 Cr to acquire 9% stake in the pre-seed startup.

Founded in August 2024 by Bhatnagar, AJVC eyes pre-seed investments in early stage startups. The firm claimed that it has built a proprietary technology system to evaluate companies. It is aiming to back almost 90 startups by February 2028, he said.

The development comes at a time when there is an increasing interest towards backing early stage businesses across the startup ecosystem, where investors are launching new funds for pre-seed investments.

For instance, Atomic Capital has announced the final close of its maiden fund at INR 400 Cr in August, with an ambition to back 10-12 startups under this fund. Meanwhile, Former Kae Capital partner Natasha Malpani launched an early stage fund Boundless Ventures with INR 200 Cr to back AI-native startups from India.

Notably, the early stage investment amount grew 18% year-on-year (YoY) to more than $188 Mn in the first half of 2025 across 104 deals, based on Inc42 data. In this, AI has emerged as the predominant sector preference for both early stage and growth stage investments.

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