Gaurav VK Singhvi has a useful question for anyone assembling a startup: what happens if every player on your cricket team is a batsman? Eleven people may look splendid walking out together. Sooner or later, somebody has to bowl. In his writing about founding teams, the Surat investor uses that little sporting calamity to explain a serious preference: people should bring different abilities to the same enterprise.
It is a revealing place to begin with Avinya Ventures’ co-founder, managing partner and CEO. His work runs through accounting, entrepreneurship, angel investing and organised business communities. Across those activities, the recurring subject is who belongs in the room, what each person can contribute, and whether they will still be useful when the conversation turns difficult.
A balance sheet with a missing skill
Before the investment portfolio came a business that did not work. Between 2013 and 2015, Singhvi tried building finmart.com, an online chartered-accountancy services company. He has described losing approximately ₹90-95 lakh and struggling to find a suitable technology co-founder. Accounting expertise had carried him part of the way. Building a technology business demanded abilities he did not possess.
He closed the venture in 2015. His family office dates its first investment, in DSYH, to 2016. The sequence matters: the investor’s career followed a founder’s encounter with the limits of his own expertise. A failed company became a reason to work with other entrepreneurs.
His professional foundations were already in place. The Financial Supermarket grew from a Surat accountancy practice established in 2001 under the name Gaurav Singhvi & Associates, taking its broader brand in 2006. Its services extended into financing, equity arrangements, advisory work and the practical machinery of running a business. Even the name suggests someone who prefers several useful counters to one imposing reception desk.
That background gives his later work a particular texture. An accountant encounters businesses through obligations, cash requirements and decisions with consequences. An investor encounters their promises. Singhvi’s career places those two conversations beside each other. The interesting question is how much of the first conversation survives the excitement of the second.
Surat is a starting point
Singhvi remains based in Surat. His family office describes a national investment approach, with support extending to financial advice, working spaces and business infrastructure. Its listed investments include consumer and enterprise names such as Beardo, Fynd and GetVantage. The variety is consistent with an investor looking across industries rather than organising his identity around a single fashionable sector.
He also describes himself as a first-generation entrepreneur from a family with a service background. That detail gives his interest in founders beyond the largest cities a personal reference point. The country he wants to invest in includes people whose first introduction to venture capital may arrive considerably later than their first experience of running a business.
In 2024, when his participation in The Lion’s Den Show was announced, he spoke about developing entrepreneurial ecosystems in 100 Indian cities. That was an aspiration, a statement about where opportunity should travel. A television pitch panel offered another route to reach those entrepreneurs. For someone whose work depends on introductions, the audience itself becomes part of the proposition.
The circle gets a working brief
We Founder Circle began in 2020 with Singhvi among its co-founders. The organisation combined seed funding with business development and access to a network of experienced founders, executives and investors. Its premise was straightforward: a young company may need help finding its next customer just as urgently as it needs help financing its next six months.
By October 2022, Singhvi was describing a community of more than 6,000 angels and a move towards a technology-enabled investment platform through Invstt. He said the network had helped fund 33 startups in its first year, with more than $10 million invested. Those are historical milestones for the organisation, rather than a tally of his personal cheques.
The attraction of this arrangement is practical. Someone who has built a distribution business might recognise a sales problem that a financial model treats as a neat assumption. Someone who has hired an engineering team might know why a product deadline keeps moving. A useful circle gives a founder access to those experiences without requiring the founder to acquire every scar personally.
There is an administrative challenge hidden inside the friendly word “community”. A large group needs ways to move from acquaintance to action. Invstt addresses the investment process; EvolveX, where Singhvi is a partner and director, adds an accelerator relationship. Together, the affiliations show an effort to build several routes through which founders can receive attention and support.
A room full of people is only the beginning
CorporateConnections is another substantial part of his working life. The organisation lists him alongside Yash Vasant as a national director for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Its activities include professional development, referrals, international business relationships and confidential peer forums. The setting is broader than startup finance, bringing established business owners into the same account of how opportunity travels.
The distinction between meeting somebody and being able to call on them matters here. A business card can be acquired in seconds. Trust is rather less obliging. Peer discussions and repeated encounters create occasions for people to understand one another’s judgement before a consequential request arrives. That is the working logic behind the forums and relationships Singhvi helps organise.
“Relationships cannot develop in your absence.”
Gaurav VK Singhvi
In a recent account of a CorporateConnections visit to Taiwan, he returned to participation, generosity and the depth of relationships. The language was about showing up and contributing. His public profile repeatedly comes back to those behaviours. They require the least exotic technology imaginable: time in the room and a willingness to be helpful.
The same theme was visible in Delhi in September 2026. At the fourth Know, Like, Trust gathering, Singhvi spoke about purposeful relationships and collaboration. The programme included member business stories, a leadership keynote and opportunities to connect. For an investor who also runs communities, those occasions are part of the work, even when no funding announcement follows.
The accountant keeps a seat at the table
Avinya Ventures, launched in 2023 and sponsored by We Founder Circle, brings that community experience into a venture fund. Singhvi’s role places him at the junction of founder selection, investment judgement and the network surrounding a portfolio. The word “ventures” carries plenty of romance. The useful detail is what he chooses to examine underneath it.
Consider his semiconductor commentary. Avinya’s published criteria include defensible intellectual property, experienced teams, a clear route to customers, capital efficiency and a focused market. Its interest in India’s fabless opportunity sits beside questions about how a company will reach meaningful milestones. Technical ambition has to arrive with a financial plan.
His manufacturing commentary is similarly conditional. He sees scope for Indian manufacturing to expand, while insisting that policy needs effective execution and that underlying constraints require attention. The optimism comes with a list of jobs to be done. It is a recognisable habit from financial services: an attractive destination still needs a workable route and somebody responsible for each part of the journey.
From possibility to a business
An editorial reading of his team writing and Avinya’s published semiconductor criteria.
Diamonds, toys and the unglamorous question
The range of Avinya’s sector notes is unexpectedly companionable. Semiconductor design sits near lab-grown diamonds, toys and indoor amusement centres. Singhvi’s diamond commentary concerns changing technology and consumer acceptance. His toy-industry note considers whether an Indian company has the experience and resources to meet an opening in the market. These are different products with familiar commercial questions attached.
The amusement-centre discussion brings the geography back into view. It examines demand in smaller cities, the relationship between entertainment and shopping centres, and the importance of formats and partnerships. A venture investor can spend the morning considering chips and the afternoon considering how people spend a Saturday. Both require somebody to understand the customer well enough to build a business around the answer.
His writing during the funding crunch of 2023 returns to financial discipline. He urged founders to review costs, concentrate on measurable progress and explore more than one route to capital. Investors, in turn, should examine businesses carefully, cooperate and take a patient view. Relationships appear again, alongside the spreadsheet. Neither can do the other’s job.
Someone still has to bowl
Return to the cricket team. In his 2022 essay, Singhvi asked founders to consider shared vision, commitment, attitude and complementary abilities. He also likened a founding partnership to marriage, which is a bracing comparison for anyone hoping a co-founder agreement will require less discussion than choosing a restaurant.
Underneath the analogy is a consistent interest in how people work together over time. The accountancy practice, the angel community, the peer network and the fund each organise a different kind of cooperation. Singhvi’s career has moved through all four. The work now is to make those relationships useful to the next founder with a problem to solve, a business to build, and a position on the team still waiting to be filled.