Operator judgment, investor focus.
Early capital for Indian founders building consumption companies and frontier technical bets. The help is practical because it comes from company-building rooms, not just investment memos.
Abhishek Agarwal
Abhishek went from IIT Delhi to IIM Ahmedabad, then into strategy consulting at Monitor Deloitte. What shaped him came next: founding Bold Kiln, then Director of Strategy at Ninjacart, then CBO at SHEROES.
The investing began in parallel, in 2016, at OperatorVC. That fund has returned 4x DPI already, with outcomes including Goldcast ($300M acquisition), Purple Style Labs (IPO filed), and inVideo, which went on to raise from Tiger Global.
In 2023, he began building Appreciate Capital full time around a deliberate barbell: consumption businesses where brand, distribution, and execution rigour create the moat, and frontier technical bets where India can build for global relevance.
He is useful when a founder needs to find the customer truth, pressure-test a market, sharpen the next-round story, navigate messy execution, or get to the right operator quickly. And, importantly, when they just need a shoulder.
Berlin and Bengaluru are home. He runs distance, fourteen half-marathons in. He also runs BERLIndians, a community that keeps the fund close to Indian founders, operators, and diaspora networks in Europe.