A Junior VC (AJVC), a venture capital fund launched by former Venture Highway executive Aviral Bhatnagar in August 2024, has received oversubscription from investors and is likely to tap the greenshoe option.
Bhatnagar previously led investments in software-as-a-service, consumer and AI sectors at Venture Highway until April last year. Venture Highway was acquired by US-based VC firm General Catalyst in June last year.
He launched his own firm last year with an aim to raise a corpus of nearly Rs 100 crore ($11.5 million). “We're oversubscribed and we are very actively considering exercising our greenshoe option,” he told VCCircle in an interaction.
The AJVC fund has a greenshoe option of Rs 50 crore. The fund’s limited partners include domestic family offices, large-scale tech founders, business leaders and a few American and European family offices as well, he said.
Bhatnagar, the solo general partner for the fund managing its investments and portfolio, started AJVC as a blog six years ago focused on the startup and the VC ecosystem in India. He set up the VC fund last year and received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India in August.
The fund is sector-agnostic and will focus on backing early-stage startups, primarily in the pre-seed stage. These include startups in pre-revenue stage, with paper plans, working prototype and early revenue among others, he said.
“We have a standard deal. We invest Rs 1.5 crore for 9% for all our companies. So, any company that fits at this stage is ideal for us,” said Bhatnagar.
“We plan to do about 12 to 15 investments every year. That's the goal. And perhaps we will increase the pace as momentum goes up,” he added.
AJVC intends to back over 50 startups through the vehicle. So far, it has invested in nine companies. Of these, five are in the AI domain, two are in direct-t0-consumer, and one each in business-to-business and one consumer-tech verticals.
