D2C Insider, India’s largest D2C community, successfully hosted its inaugural Super Angels Founders Day this past Saturday at UrbanWrk, Gurugram. The exclusive event brought together a vibrant mix of founders, super angels, and industry leaders, marking the first in-person interaction between D2C Insider Super Angels portfolio companies and their LP’s.
The evening served as a unique platform to reflect on the Super Angels Fund 1’s progress over the past year, particularly the strategic fund allocations and foster meaningful conversations around growth, innovation, and investment in the D2C space. Among the notable attendees were fund’s LPs like Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal, Hitesh Dhingra, founder of The Man Company, Sumit Baid, founder KeraGain, Atul Bhakta, Group CEO, One World Group, Mohit Garg, co-founder and CEO of Assembly, amongst other guests.
The portfolio companies including Assembly, Basil, Business on Bot, Crest, Divine Hindu, Futwork, GoOat, Pikndel, Snackible, Samosa Party, Solved Skin, and Steam Pro got a chance to showcase their company’s growth graphs and their business moves made in the past one year. They also got a chance to interact with their early believers (LPs) like Gaurav Gupta, (Co-founder, Shipway), Hriday Agarwal (Founder, E-com 360), Atul Bhakta (Group CEO, One World Group), Sumit Baid (founder KeraGain), Rahul Johar (Co-Founder & CEO, Oxbow Brands), Abhishek Gaggneja, (Founder at Goodveda) and Riya Gupta, (Founder, The Whimsy Beauty) to name a few.
A major highlight of the evening was a compelling fireside chat titled ‘The Operator Capital Revolution,’ featuring Rohit Bansal and Hitesh Dhingra in conversation with Abhishek Shah, Chief Evangelist of D2C Insider. The discussion explored how seasoned founders are redefining early-stage investments through an ‘operator-first’ lens.
Hitesh Dhingra emphasized the importance of deep consumer understanding in early-stage founders, saying, “For me, it’s all about the consumer insights—how strong they are, the consumer profile, and how much knowledge the founder has about the market.”
Rohit Bansal, reflecting on his own journey from founder to investor, added a candid perspective, “We are very mindful to use our learnings. We feel that investors and entrepreneurs should have more transparent conversations so that the fundraising process can be constructive for both.” He highlighted the value of transparency over diplomacy stating, “As investors, we meet hundreds of companies. Rather than giving only politically correct answers or ghosting founders, we connect them to potential customers and are transparent about their products. It adds much more value to the founder’s journey irrespective of whether we invest or not.”
Another key segment was the engaging panel discussion titled “From Guts to Graphs: What Founders Feel vs What Investors See.” The panel featured a dynamic mix of the portfolio companies and LPs including Gaurav Gupta (Shipway), Bhisham Bhateja (The Man Company), Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly), Niranjan Nakhate (Futwork), Harshita Kejriwal (Basil), and Sumir Chadha (Steam Pro). The discussion dove into the nuances of founder-investor dynamics, how early-stage pitches are evaluated, and the emotional and analytical sides of building startups.
With a vibrant community of 10k+ founders from the D2C space in India, D2C Insider’s Super Angels Fund has already made strategic bets through its Super Angel Fund I of ₹25cr corpus, launched last year—backing breakout startups like Snackible, Futwork, and PiknDel, among others. Flagship gatherings like Super Angels Founders Day reinforce D2C Insider’s mission to enable the next 100 top D2C startups from an early stage. Today, D2C Insider stands as India’s leading platform for everything direct-to-consumer—from brands to enablers to investors —driving ecosystem-wide growth through collaboration, transparency, and collective learning.
