ArbDossier

The Charter has a co-founder. Today, Avik Ashar formally joins me in building The Charter. I met Avik almost exactly a year ago, at the launch party of Harajuku Tokyo Cafe. The first thing we found out about each other was that we had the same karaoke song. Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls. The second thing I found out took longer, and mattered more. Over the past year, Avik has stood by Bombay Founders' Club, and then The Charter, for no reason other than his belief in what we are building. There was no title, no role and no ask. He showed up anyway, again and again. Along the way, we started The Founder and The Funder together, the podcast we now run. When you build a community on trust, the people you build it with matter more than anything else. I could not have asked for a better partner to do this with. Avik has built and sold a company, invested in over 60 startups, headed family offices and worked in venture capital. He has seen founders and capital from almost every side of the table. He could have spent his time anywhere. He chose to spend it here. This is not a new beginning so much as us making official what has been true for a while. Welcome, co-founder. The next round of Iris is on me.

Ten years ago, Aviva Jogani and I were interns. Ten years later, she messaged me and asked to join The Charter. In the decade in between, she built the career most law students dream of. Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), Trilegal and then Bombay Law Chambers. Six years of doing serious work, in serious rooms. She didn't need to leave. She chose to. Aviva has joined our Founder's Office. Not as a lawyer. That part means a lot to me. I made a version of that same jump years ago. So I know what it costs. You give up a title that explains you in one word. You walk into a room where nobody cares which firm you came from. You start again, on purpose. Most people never do it. Not because they can't, but because the safe path is very comfortable. Here's what I keep learning while building The Charter: The best people don't come from job posts. They come from people who remember you. Ten years is a long time to remember someone. I'm really glad she did. Welcome to The Charter, Aviva. We're lucky to have you.

Just three words added to this aquarium brand's packaging helped them increase sales by 99% in a three month span. The biggest learning: Stop trying to sound clever. Try to be as clear as you can instead. This is actually much harder, but reaps massive dividends. Spectrum Brands, Inc sold aquariums, fish food, filters, but all to hobbyists. They wanted to sell to families, but weren't able to. So they called Donald Miller, the man who wrote Building a StoryBrand. His advice was three words. Put "Kids love aquariums" on everything. The tanks. The food. The plants. The signs. The room was not impressed. They wanted research. They wanted A/B tests. Miller talked them into one test market. Three months later, sales there were up 99%. Clever makes people admire you. Clear makes them buy. Most of us are simply too close to what we sell to say the obvious thing out loud.

I fund your second set of mistakes, not your first. Two founders yesterday reminded me exactly what that's worth. Your last job was tuition. Someone else paid it. I met two founders yesterday who reminded me why experience matters so much. The first was Rahool Sureka. He worked a few years, then built Fitso, which Zomato acquired. He was refreshingly honest about it. Pivoting every two or three months to find a business model. Landing on sports events. Becoming one of the most downloaded sports apps in the country, and watching that not turn into revenue. What an acquisition actually feels like. The negotiations. The emotions. He is now on round two, building Openhouse, in secondary real estate transactions. The speed and capital efficiency he has scaled with comes from one thing: he already made those mistakes once. The second was Tamal G.s Tamal G.. Years spent scaling startups across India, Singapore, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Then he struggled to care for his ageing parents, and founded YORO Health to fix it. He runs it with a ruthless focus on quality, time and unit economics. That is not a first-timer's instinct. That is a decade of watching companies get it wrong. Capital in India is finite. When I write a cheque, I am trying to buy the highest chance of success per rupee. Mistakes you have already made, at a job or at your last company, are mistakes I am not paying for again. You will make new ones. That is the job. I wish I could back every bright-eyed founder with an idea and energy. I can't. So my honest advice: work a few years first. Ideally in the field you want to build in.

Usually I’m behind the monitor, cutting other people’s stories. This time, our COO stepped in front of the camera his first podcast, ever. Farhan Jaorewalla sat down with Archna Chandan Jaisinghani on 9 to Thrive. They talked about founders’ life in India, what it’s really like building inside The Charter, and why he chose a startup over a corporate job at 22. They also spoke about the parts of building a company that people don’t usually talk about the pressure, the doubts, the late nights. Watching someone I work with every day open up like that hits different. Full episode linked in the comments. Would love to know what you think.

Most brand collaborations are forgettable. What Dhruvi Bhanushali, the CMO of The Charter orchestrated with the dynamic Rinesh Dalal and the team at the JD Institute of Fashion Technology was different. She brought over 20 of our D2C founders together with design students. Each founder handed their brand over to the students. The students redesigned it with their own ideas, but for a real company with real rules, not a made-up class project. Brands suddenly had a clothing line inspired by their products. Real models wore it and walked the runway. Students stopped designing for imaginary brands and started designing for real ones. That changes how you think forever. For our founders, it was an experience. They watched their brand come alive on a runway, reimagined by young designers who saw what they could not. And a runway show was pure theatre. You do not forget a night like that. The best collaborations are not trades. They are experiences that change the people inside them. None of this happens without Dhruvi. As CMO of The Charter, she has a rare gift for spotting the ideas worth the effort, and the patience to see them through properly. That is her on stage at the JD Design Awards, with the founders of the JD Institute. Very well earned.

I take over 80 flights a year for work. Somewhere along the way, I found a hack which changed the way I book my flight tickets. Before I book, I run the flight number through FlightAware. It tells you how often that specific flight is delayed, and by how much, on average. The 12pm Mumbai–Delhi might run less than 10 minutes late on average. The 6pm on the same route might routinely lose you an hour. Force majeure and one-offs will always happen. But most delays aren't random, and I'd rather not be part of a pattern of delays. Two minutes of checking has saved me many hours of sitting at airports. If you fly often, try it before your next booking.

Thank you Rohan Bilimoria for making my day with this! What a pleasant surprise!

The Charter is being convened in Bangalore, 19.07.2026. Last Saturday, we bid adieu to the name Bombay Founders' Club, a name that has always meant so much more than that to us. We were at a pivotal moment where we had to choose between protecting our past and building towards our future, and we decided to pick the latter. The Charter is not just a name, it is also a reference to an actual charter that has been drawn up after some intense and heated debates by some of the most senior founders and investors in India. We read it out on Sunday in Bangalore. If you are a founder who has crossed PMF or an institutional investor, we welcome you to our White Soiree in Bangalore - https://luma.com/zaplzplo. As always, please remember that we are incredibly particular about the quality of the room, and shall not be accepting service providers, employees and analysts/associates of VC funds in the room.