At 28, Aditya Arora has backed greater than 125 startups throughout India. However in contrast to many traders who began in banks or consulting corporations, his route into enterprise capital started in classroom corners, comedy rooms, and group meetups.

A decade in the past, Aditya was instructing underprivileged kids, designing campaigns round the concept “expertise is common, alternative is just not.”

He experimented with stand-up comedy, organised Quora meetups, wrote content material, and carried out interviews – constructing communities lengthy earlier than he constructed portfolios.

In school, he didn’t anticipate permission. He ran small tasks, campus initiatives, and early experiments with associates. Some concepts labored briefly, others failed outright, however every cycle sharpened his understanding of how individuals organise round issues.

That intuition to convene led to the start of FAAD – initially as a group for founders, professionals, and college students to satisfy, be taught, and collaborate. The phrase “faad” itself, rooted in youth slang, signalled power and intent.

FAAD’s pivot right into a fundraising platform wasn’t scripted. It emerged from repeated questions at its occasions: how will we really increase cash? The crew began experimenting with pitching-focused periods, the place startups may current to curated traders in a single room, compressing weeks of outreach right into a single night. Early successes got here with firms like ClearDekho and Stylework, and shortly FAAD’s function as a bridge between startups and traders solidified.

Over time, Aditya’s lens deepened from group builder to capital allocator. FAAD in the present day operates as an funding platform backing early-stage founders, with Aditya on the centre of its dealflow and founder engagement.

What stands out in his method is an emphasis on individuals over spreadsheets. Finance will be discovered; studying individuals takes time. Having assessed almost 10,000 founders, Aditya pays shut consideration to how they reply to rejection, deal with suggestions, and behave when the room isn’t of their favour. For him, these moments reveal extra about long-term potential than any single metric on a slide.

How does somebody who began with chalk and whiteboard, not Excel, take into consideration portfolio development and danger in the present day? What have 125+ investments taught him in regards to the distinction between an excellent story and a sturdy enterprise?

The complete chronicle of Aditya’s journey – from training campaigns to FAAD’s evolution as an funding platform – is captured in The Indian Dream – third Version below The Investimonial part.

You may learn the entire piece on IndianDream.club