A Junior VC

19-year-old Maddock Films is giving tough competition to 54-year-old YRF and 45-year-old Dharma Productions. 2024 is not the year of famous producers like Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra or Sanjay Leela Bhansali, but it is the non-nepo kid Dinesh Vijan who is ruling the Box office with consecutive hits like Stree 2 (Rs.900 Crore), Munjya (Rs.140 Cr) and Teri Baaton Mein (Rs. 140 Cr). Dinesh Vijan professionally a banker quit his job in 2004 and ventured into filmmaking, driven by a passion for storytelling and cinema. Initially, he had no connections or experience in the industry, which made his entry challenging. He started as a producer with Homi Adajania's Being Cyrus (2005). Their collaboration later led to successful projects like Cocktail and Finding Fanny. His banking background provided him with analytical skills that proved beneficial in managing production budgets and logistics, but the creative aspects of filmmaking required a different approach altogether. Dinesh co-founded Illuminati Films with Saif Ali Khan in 2008, and Vijan gained further insights into the industry dynamics. His vision was clear: to create films that blended commercial success with artistic integrity. Between 2009 and 2013, Indian cinema underwent a notable transformation. The movies moved away from the traditional formulaic Bollywood films towards more content-driven cinema. A pivotal moment in Vijan’s journey was when it made its mark with films like “Love Aaj Kal” (2009) and “Cocktail” (2012). Love Aaj Kal” was a commercial success and a critical darling. The movie broke the then hard-to-break 100 Cr mark, hitting 120 Cr worldwide. However, setbacks such as Agent Vinod—taught him invaluable lessons about supporting directors and understanding audience expectations. Vijan wanted to move to the next level by starting his new production house, and this is how Maddock Gilms was born.   Maddock started its journey with Finding Fanny, whose critical and commercial success gave Dinesh Vijan the credibility to secure funding for future projects. Between 2019 and 2021, Maddock Films underwent a significant transformation, known initially for its romantic comedies, the production house ventured into new cinematic territories, experimenting with horror-comedy, dramedies, and socially relevant dramas. The foundation was set with the 2018 release of Stree, a horror-comedy that redefined the genre in Bollywood. The film grossed over ₹180 crore globally on a modest budget of ₹20 crore, becoming one of the year's highest-grossing films. In 2024, Stree 2 did it again with the box office collection of Rs.900 Crore, making it the year's biggest hit. To read more about the journey of Maddock Films, read our newsletter here (https://lnkd.in/d7BjbR2n )

Did you know that India’s logistics market is worth $200B and grows at a CAGR of 10% annually? Porter’s founders Uttam Digga and Pranav Goel saw this as an opportunity for a new business. The two IIT Kharagpur alums identified the inefficiencies in the logistics sector. In 2013, Digga and Goel, while working at JP Morgan, were inspired by Uber's use of technology to revolutionise transportation. They observed a similar opportunity in the logistics sector, where many commercial vehicles were idle. After interviewing hundreds of truck drivers, they identified significant inefficiencies. Drivers only completed 1-2 deliveries daily, while their vehicles could handle 4-5. Inspired by Uber's success, Digga and Goel founded Porter, a platform optimising goods transportation. Porter offers various services, including food delivery, e-commerce shipping, package delivery, grocery delivery, and bike taxi transportation. Road logistics alone accounted for 55% ($110B) of the overall market, with the rest spread across rail, shipping, air transport, and warehousing. Approximately 85% of the road logistics market was tied to inter-city transport, while the remaining 15% covered intra-city deliveries. The market was dominated by small fleet operators, who owned fewer than five trucks each and represented 67% of road transport operators, controlling more than half of the trucks on Indian roads. However, the industry’s unorganized and fragmented nature posed significant challenges. A lack of aggregation meant that 35% of transport vehicles carried less than full truckloads, and operators often struggled to find goods for return trips. Porter saw all these shortcomings as an opportunity to enter this logistics market. Currently, Porter is present in 15 cities across India, has over 200,000 drivers, and has more than five million customers. Porter’s operating revenue increased to Rs.2,734 crore in 2024 from Rs.1,753 crore in 2023. As Dunzo and many other logistics players folded, Porter took off as a quiet builder. To read more about the journey of Porter, read our article here (https://lnkd.in/d2bR5qCA )  

Alakh Pandey’s Physics Wallah, valued at $2.8 B after raising $210 M is a perfect example of why content and community are important for a successful business. Physics Wallah has a base of over 5.5 Lakh paid students, over 2 Lakh enrolled at offline centres, and 46 million YouTube subscribers assisted by 15 thousand people. Physics Wallah reported a revenue of Rs 16,00 Cr in FY24, a 2.5x increase from the previous financial year. Alakh Pandey’s journey from a teacher to an entrepreneur inspires many. In 2014, Alakh started his career in a coaching institute and, parallelly, started a YouTube channel where he uploaded videos of the lectures he prepared for the day at his offline coaching. By 2016 Alakh looked at YouTube as his full-time teaching medium. At that time BYJU was thriving and Unacademy and Vedantu had just started. To stand apart in the crowd, Alakh decided to work on average students and get them better, a feat that was much harder to achieve. Finding good teachers in Tier II and Tier III cities was difficult. Slowly his YouTube videos started gaining momentum. One thing which helped Alakh’s YouTube journey was the 2016 Jio revolution, which changed the way Indians consumed data. With Jio, high-speed data, the Edtech sector flourished with rising smartphone penetration, internet access, and students' ambitions to win big. The next milestone which came for EdTech was the Pandemic, when the world hit pause, education didn't. It was in 2020 when Alakh decided to capitalise on its YouTube success and launched its app, offering courses at astonishingly low rates. The prices ranged from INR 500 to INR 4,500, with an average cost of INR 3,500. This pricing strategy undercut the fees of counterparts like Unacademy and Vedantu. PW was also lower than traditional offline coaching classes with an average course price of INR 15,000, making quality education more accessible. Physics Wallah started with minimal initial investment and bootstrapped its growth through organic means. This approach allowed Physics Wallah to maintain control over its operations and avoid early dilution of equity. In 2021, Physics Wallah received Series A funding of  $100 M in funding, which helped the company achieve a valuation of $1.1 B. This year, Physics Wallah raised $210 M in Series B funding. At a time when Edtech funding has slowed down, Physics Wallah is able to maintain its momentum. To read more about the journey of Physics Wallah read our article (https://lnkd.in/d3FpTdgm )here.      

India’s first unicorn, InMobi, with a revenue of $100M+, has secured $100 M in debt financing from MARS Growth Capital ahead of a planned IPO InMobi has always raised funding to remain relevant. Its first round of $500K was raised in 2006, followed by Series A of $7M and Series B of $8M in 2010. InMobi became a unicorn in 2011. More recently, in 2021, it raised back-to-back capital for its mobile-first content platform Glance, which has received investment from Jio and Google. Current funding is raised to accelerate InMobi's AI initiatives and may be used to acquire AI-related companies. InMobi present in 165 countries, provides a diverse portfolio of mobile advertising solutions, powered by cutting-edge AI and machine learning, to deliver maximum results. Surprisingly, InMobi has remained relevant for a while. It started in 2007 at a time when AI was not used, but InMobi kept innovating over the years. Its journey began as mKhoj, a pioneering mobile search service, but later mKhoj was rebranded to InMobi as it shifted its focus to mobile advertising. InMobi has 200M+ subscribers and is expected to reach 1B lock screens by 2025. They aim to achieve this by partnering with leading mobile device makers including Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Motorola, Realme and Jio. With a market share of 2%, InMobi competes with Google, which has a market share of 34%, followed by Zemanta (28%) and Aarki (9%) The interesting thing about InMobi is the creation of its ex-team members who have gone on to create massive companies. Meesho and Observe are two companies started by founders who worked at InMobi. To read more about InMobi's journey, read our article (https://lnkd.in/dtNK3kXy )here.

Who knew that even a 5,000 Cr scam by Harshad Mehta could not deter AngelOne’s Dinesh Thakkar from entering the stock market? 28-year-old AngelOne is still relevant, enjoying a market share of 15% At a time when Zerodha, Groww, 5 paisa, TradeSmart and 190 others are there to compete with the OG of the investing industry, AngelOne is giving tough competition. 24,000 Crore AngelOne with 50+ lakh active clients, continues to surprise the broking industry long after its birth. Currently, there are more than 85 M Indians who invest in the stock market. The Indian security brokerage market is expected to grow from USD 4 B in 2024 to USD 6 B by 2029, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8%. This growth is attributed to the market's attractiveness to investors and brokerage firms. Though the market is currently booming, AngelOne’s Dinesh Thakkar saw this market very early in 1996. Dinesh was never a very studious person, but to understand this market he studied technical charts for over 12 hours a day until he began to perfect his game. He knew the market was unkind to newcomers, especially after the Harshad Mehta Scam. Thakkar believed that through transparency and innovation, he would ease the fears of what could be generations of investors who would never again set foot in the stock market. A year later, in 1997, Angel Broking would quickly diversify into wealth management, retail, and corporate broking. He would be the first broker to use a walkie-talkie to share real-time prices with his customers, a simple technique not utilised in the market until then. It would also be one of the first companies to issue credit notes to customers within a day, a process that would have taken at least a week earlier. Angel Broking was well ahead of its time in simplifying stock investing for the masses. To read more about the journey of AngelOne, read our article here (https://lnkd.in/dNNsm_bX )

India has established 224 funds focused on early-stage investments in the last five years. In the first half of 2024, 200+ deals were made for pre-seed startups. Pre-seed funding is a startup's first big supporter, and it helps entrepreneurs validate and refine their business ideas. These numbers suggest that pre-seed is a growing, untapped opportunity in India. As more early-stage startups have emerged, the corpus size of early-stage funds has increased significantly and larger VCs focus on late-stage deals. AJVC is trying to be that pre-seed fund that will guide the courageous to be entrepreneurs. To understand more about India’s startup ecosystem, pre-seed funds and how AJVC is thinking of investments, please watch the podcast of our founder Aviral Bhatnagar (https://lnkd.in/dyAWccRZ )

India’s Tesla, Ather Energy with a revenue of Rs. 1,784 Cr, is all set to file for a Rs 4,000-crore IPO at a 16,000 Cr valuation. Ather Energy started at the IIT Madras incubator, In 2013, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain went back to their institute’s incubator to develop a battery pack.  The battery, which was lithium-ion, is a progression from the earlier battery types used in electric vehicles. Though they were working on the battery, unfortunately at that point they had no vehicles to sell it to. They then realised that a huge market of two-wheelers and electric vehicles was waiting for them. Ather got its first funding of ₹45.5 lakh million in 2014 followed by a seed capital of 6 Cr $1 M from Flipkart founders. The two-wheeler market in India is valued at USD 302 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.50% from 2024 to 2032.   Hero MotoCorp is the largest two-wheeler manufacturer in India, with over 26% of the market share, followed by Honda (24%).   Considering this growing market, Tarun and Swapnil decided to build electric scooters. What's good about this is that the market leader of two-wheelers, Hero MotoCorp, is backing Ather.   India's electric two-wheeler market was valued at $1.7 billion in 2022. It is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2032.    The market leader in this sector is Ola Electric with a 42% market share followed by TVS Motor (19%) and Ather Energy (9%).   However, Ather wants to increase its market share and is setting an ambitious valuation target of about ₹16,800-19,000 crore.   Ather’s rival Ola Electric, which went public last month, posted Rs 1,644 crore in revenue during the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal year, marking its net loss down by 17% to Rs 347 crore.   Another aiming the same with the backing of a two-wheeler giant, Hero MotoCorp, can do wonders like it did when it started as an incubator. To read more about the journey of Ather, read our piece here (https://lnkd.in/dTGEJUMr )

At a valuation of $1.1 Billion, ride-hailing Rapido has entered India’s 110+ unicorn club, after getting $200 million in its Series E funding, led by WestBridge Capital. The taxi driving business is growing globally and is expected to generate a revenue of US$141B by 2024, and 1B users by 2029. The same is witnessed in India, where the projected revenue is INR US$7B in 2024 and 148M users by 2029. A deeper market analysis reveals a white space in the segment. Daily commuters in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities were unwilling to spend more to cover the same distance. In 2015 Rapido cracked this space and quickly grew to over 100 captains, and with their customers saving both time and money, they rapidly achieved product market fit. Within the first six months, by mid-2016, the app had been downloaded over 50,000 times. Their fleet grew to over 400, completing 1.25 Lakh rides, with over 85% of the rides coming from repeat customers. So substituting the luxurious four-wheeler with a cheaper two-wheeler is a viable value proposition. The bike taxi market in India was estimated to be ~$908M in 2019, with a projection to grow to ~$2B by 2028 at a modest CAGR of 10.39% Targeting this market also enabled employment generation by onboarding Captains on their platform. A huge market disruption opportunity existed. The market is expected to grow due to the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, the rise of ride-hailing services, and the expansion of online taxi bookings. Considering this growing business, Rapido first became a king in the two-wheeler sector and is now exploring the three and four-wheeler as well. Currently, Rapido is present in over 100 cities, including tier 2 and 3 cities across the country. This funding will be directed towards expanding Rapido’s newly launched four-wheeler taxi service, which will compete directly with Ola and Uber. Rapido has left Ola behind and become the number two player after Uber in the overall ride-hailing space including bike, auto, and cabs. As of March 2024, Uber processed 19.3 lakh rides daily while Rapido did 16.5 lakh rides a day followed by Ola which did 13 lakh rides. Though Rapido’s aim is clear, that they want to be the number one player in this segment, for which they are raising capital, their revenue surged 3X to Rs 443 crore during FY23. But this steep growth in scale has caused a 54% spike in losses which stood at Rs 675 crore in FY23. It will be interesting to see how $1.1 Billion Rapido will compete with Ola ($ 2 B) and Uber ($150 B) in India. To read more about the journey of Rapido, read our newsletter here (https://lnkd.in/dEjDTQ-z)

Singapore-based Edtech Eruditus, which has a revenue of Rs. 3,320 Cr, is said to be raising 1,200 Cr, cementing its surprising position as the leader in Indian EdTech. There was a time when its biggest competitors were upGrad, Toppr and BYJUs. Eruditus operates differently in a market where K12, test preparation, and online certification dominate. Eruditus, an online education company founded by Chaitanya Kalipatnapu and Ashwin Damera, offers executive-level programs for working professionals. It partners with universities worldwide to make executive education available to individuals and companies. But at a time when its other competitors are either dying or struggling to survive, Eruditus continues to remain relevant. In 2023, Eruditus reported revenue of INR 3,320 Cr, a 75% increase from INR 1,900 Cr in 2022. With this revenue, Eruditus became the biggest ed-tech startup by revenue, followed by upGrad. Eruditus receives 70% of its revenues from overseas markets. About 40% of its enrolments come from the US, 25% from India, and 35% from other global markets. Eruditus funding is significant, as it is done at a time when India’s Ed-tech is struggling. BYJUs, once the most valued startup in India, faces insolvency proceedings. While BYJUs and Unacademy are finding their feet, Eruditus and upGrad, which focus on professional upskilling, have been growing and receiving investor interest. India’s Edtech market is valued at $7.5 billion and is projected to reach $29 billion by 2030, with over 100 million paid users. The market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.8% between 2024 and 2030. Eruditus is king, having raised $814M in equity funding. To read more about the journey of Eruditus, read our long piece here: (https://lnkd.in/d-wzpZZE)

Zomato with a revenue of Rs. 12,961 Crore is now eyeing the Rs. 8,800 Crore live events market by acquiring Paytm's entertainment and ticketing business for Rs 2,048 crore. But this tactic is not new for Zomato In 2022, Zomato entered the grocery market by acquiring Blinkit formerly known as Grofers for Rs. 4,100 Crore. In just two years, Blinkit’s valuation has grown 25 times to 1 Lakh Crore, making it more valuable than Zomato’s food delivery business. After Blinkit’s success, Zomato is looking for its new market and repeat the Blinkit success. So a market with high growth and less competition is the live events ticketing market of India. The live events market is growing at a rate of 18% and is expected to reach Rs.14,300 Crores by 2026 There are several event management companies and startups like BookMyShow with a market share of 78%. In the last year, BookMyShow’s revenue has increased by 3.5x, which showcases the demand of the Industry. Maybe after winning the Food delivery war with Swiggy, Zomato is up to enter the ticketing market with BookMyShow. Though BookMyShow is the leader in the Live events segment, Zomato has a large loyal customer base. Entry into this segment will solve the ticketing and food for customers. So whoever wins the segment, is a win-win for the customer. As we said in our AJVC newsletter, Zomato is a matchmaker for your perfect evening, be it food delivery, dining, cooking at home or events. It was in 2020 when we betted on the Hunger Games of Zomato, which is still on. To read more about the journey of Zomato, read our newsletter here (https://lnkd.in/dSddgksU )