CEO @velocity_in: shipping, working capital & AI for India's D2C brands. Takes on eCommerce + company building. Fortune 40 under 40 | Ex @McKinsey @ElevCap
Bengaluru, India
Joined July 2009
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Unpopular opinion: this narrative works a LOT better for VCs than for founders.
A VC can back twenty moonshots and be fine if one lands. A founder gets one shot and spends at least a decade on it.
A better strategy for founders imo might be to build a solid core first and then keep expanding, evolving and investing in moonshots.
Sometimes a “here and now” dried fish trading business transforms itself into world’s largest marker of memory chip and mobile phones.
Look, India has two kinds of VCs right now. One set continues to invest in things that are 'here and now", the ice cream brands, the new age high end goods, and frankly a variety of local maxima incremental tech including a lot of stuff in AI.
The reality is those are going to make some money, no doubt. Per capita disposable income in increasing, some of the local maxima tech cos will be m&a fodder, etc, etc etc. I don't have anything against these VCs, and 100% believe founders should chase whatever dream they are energized by and can find capital partners for (VCs are but just one source). A lot of this incremental stuff is guaranteed 2-3x MOIC. But the future of India will be built on stuff that's transformational.
The market there is in bringing the frontier to the present and chances of success are miniscule. Everyone investing there, everyone starting a company there is very likely to get <1x of the capital back. But that's where the >100x returns are. I wake up thinking most likely things are NOT going to work, most likely we will all fail, but WHAT IF WE ARE RIGHT? WHAT IF WE WIN?
I think these sorts of probabilities attract a certain class of founders and it needs a certain class of investors that need to co-exist. These founders have global ambition and are global maximas. The investors need to match that both in their own understanding of what global maximas are, and how to amplify this ambition through capital, network, experience. That's the business partnership that India needs.
What if you are from a top tier fund but also an MBA?
Asking for a friend 🤪
Which startups are most likely to get an investment from top tier VCs?
I looked at ~60 attributes across 5000 startups and these were the 15 strongest.
#1 is being from a top tier fund. MBA is a negative signal
Full list of signals below:
Abhiroop Medhekar retweeted
A ‘hello world’ milestone for Project Suncatcher 🚀
After launching our prototype satellite a few weeks ago, we’ve now successfully sent a command up to orbit, booted up the TPU, ran the prompt, and received our first complete response back on earth - a haiku!
Abhiroop Medhekar retweeted
We do the same, we prefer FedEx over USPS (🇺🇸)
Faster deliveries, Less items lost, More customer trust at checkout.
Many D2C brands dont realise this, but the cheapest courier rate is the most expensive saving in e-commerce.
Shadowfax just said in its quarterly results that same day / next day delivery options are upto 20% more expensive than standard shipping.
I would pay that premium every single day.
Our data across crores of orders shows that every single day of reduction in transit time reduces RTOs by 4%. That is gold.
Here is the math 👇
Assuming Rs 1,000 AOV, 50% margins, Rs 60 of standard shipping cost and 3 days of current transit time.
With same day / next day, Rs 60 shipping becomes about Rs 70, so Rs 1,000 extra per 100 orders.
But delivering 2 days sooner cuts RTO by 8 points. That's 8 more sales (Rs 4,000 margin) and 8 fewer return trips (about Rs 500).
Spend 1000, get back 4500. It’s a no brainer, even without adding the benefits in customer satisfaction, life time value and working capital.
So if you are building a D2C brand, figure out how to maximise your SDD / NDD share today ✅
Friday reminder for everyone playing the long game - look how far you've come!
#gratitude
Abhiroop Medhekar retweeted
Biggest profit and cash flow issue of d2c brands has been solved. Happy Diwali in advance to all of you. 🐒🚀
Many D2C brands dont realise this, but the cheapest courier rate is the most expensive saving in e-commerce.
Shadowfax just said in its quarterly results that same day / next day delivery options are upto 20% more expensive than standard shipping.
I would pay that premium every single day.
Our data across crores of orders shows that every single day of reduction in transit time reduces RTOs by 4%. That is gold.
Here is the math 👇
Assuming Rs 1,000 AOV, 50% margins, Rs 60 of standard shipping cost and 3 days of current transit time.
With same day / next day, Rs 60 shipping becomes about Rs 70, so Rs 1,000 extra per 100 orders.
But delivering 2 days sooner cuts RTO by 8 points. That's 8 more sales (Rs 4,000 margin) and 8 fewer return trips (about Rs 500).
Spend 1000, get back 4500. It’s a no brainer, even without adding the benefits in customer satisfaction, life time value and working capital.
So if you are building a D2C brand, figure out how to maximise your SDD / NDD share today ✅
Hitesh Oberoi spent 27 years at Info Edge, 16 of them as CEO.
Kept building enduring market leaders like Naukri, 99acres and Jeevansathi, plus an investing arm that backed a generation of top Indian startups.
On his watch, Info Edge became one of the best compounders in Indian public markets, a hallmark of top-notch governance and the flag bearer for new-age listed businesses. Market cap went up a whopping 32x, from about ₹2,500 Cr to ₹80,000 Cr.
It's truly inspiring to have role models like Hitesh in the ecosystem.
Congrats on an amazing run, @hitobs 🙇🏻
🚨 IMP development at Info Edge!
Info Edge CEO Hitesh Oberoi to step down after 27 years, Sanjeev Bikhchandani to take over
moneycontrol.com/news/busine…
Abhiroop Medhekar retweeted
Walter Isaacson asks Peter Thiel what humans can uniquely do in the AI era.
Thiel: "We're very relational… these relational dimensions will become more important."
When knowledge is worth $0, the only career skills that matter:
- networking / social calibration
- persuasion (sales)
- curiosity (harnessing AI)
- taste (curation)
- storytelling
- grit
- golfing with clients (or equivalent)
We'll get so sick of a fake world that we'll go back to doing business like it's the 1800s. A handshake at the local saloon.
An AI agent just handed a support ticket to a human, *before* the customer got angry.
It is a sign of great respect in their culture.
Risk factors are always the first section I read in an IPO filing. Anthropic's runs into 80 of its 261 pages 👀
Usually it's customer concentration, key-person risk, a pending tax notice etc.
Anthropic’s is different:
- It warns that its own models could resist shutdown, hide information or act on their own at scale
- It says those models now write much of its code and safety research.
- It even warns that no insurer may be big enough to cover a catastrophic AI incident.
Anthropic is telling investors, in writing, that its product could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity."
As a retail investor - Appreciate the honesty. Not sure how a price it in though 😅
Abhiroop Medhekar retweeted
Got introduced by 20 yo founder to another 20-something founder with the following blurb:
“gokul is fantastic and one of my investors. very sharp, helpful. not boomer”
“Not boomer” is a sign of great respect in their culture.
Said this about food brands last night. Looks like it holds beyond food too.
Fix-my-curls found that shoppers weren't adding an 800 Rs bottle to their scarts. So they made Rs 150-300 trial packs for Blinkit.
Quick commerce is fast becoming the best sampling counter for new age brands.
D2C was never really a strong fit for F&B tbh. Quick commerce is specifically great for discovery and trials of F&B brands. Arguably, better than Insta as a discovery channel because of instant gratification.
Journey for other categories looked like D2C > Marketplaces > Offline
IMO, many F&B brands will leapfrog directly from quick commerce to offline (largely skipping D2C and marketplaces).
Having worked at a VC fund before starting up, I will take the unpopular side of this one.
VCs take as much risk as exits allow. In India and US alike. That's pretty much it.
For a decade, exits were the big unanswered question in India. And that risk got priced in.
The good news? This is changing fast, thanks to our public markets. In 2025 alone, Indian VCs generated ~USD 9 Bn of liquidity through IPOs.
I strongly believe that risk appetite will follow the exits. Excited about the next decade of VC-backed innovation in India 🚀
Why are Indian VCs so afraid to take risk and make money?
Someone should go to India and take risk and make money.
Our story - corememory.com/p/a-new-india…
Boy: Do not try and build the moat. That's impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Boy: There is no moat.
Neo: There is no moat?
Boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the moat that builds, it is only yourself.
(More profound than you’d think)
Blinkit announced that it will operate a network of 5000 dark stores by 2028.
All I can think about is how much more working capital will get stuck for consumer brands.
Feb 2021. The Pant Project was barely 3 months old when Dhruv applied to Velocity - maybe purely out of curiosity.
Back then I did the diligence calls myself. Ended up having a great chat. Solid founder, manufacturing background, now building a product he would proudly wear himself. I was wow-ed on the call itself.
The Pant Project holds a special place in Velocity’s journey because it really pushed the boundaries for us in multiple ways:
- It was the youngest company we funded
- It was the fastest disbursal we had done
- It was the steepest jump in our top up financing amount because of how fast they grew
- It made us rethink and revamp our financing model for fast growing brands
The best part was at the end of the call. Dhruv asked if his family office could invest in Velocity. I would have definitely made the counter if equity funding was within our scope 😄
This week they raised Rs 109 Cr in their Series B to take stores from 25 to 150!
Congrats @dhruv_toshniwal and Udit! It has truly been a joy seeing The Pant Project grow from strength to strength. We are proud to have played a small role in your growth journey and thankful for all conversations we have had over the years.
Onwards and upwards! 🚀🚀
Spend less time convincing people, more time finding people who are already convinced.
D2C version 👇
Redseer confirms that this is accurate 👇
For years, the big festive sale in India was mostly about phones and TVs.
This year Redseer data shows that phones and electronics could be less than half of festive online sales for the first time. Grocery, beauty and home are doing more of the lifting.
Good news - that is where most D2C brands live.
Less exciting headlines. Healthier market.
Early festive numbers point to more orders but smaller AOV.
Mobile and electronics sales are muted without crazy discounts. But many D2C brands and smaller sellers are seeing a strong uptick.
Signs of a maturing industry imo. A widening buyer base, better unit economics, and lower seller concentration 🙌
