Zeropearl VC’s founding partner Bipin Shah has detailed how a spur-of-the-moment conviction call in 2016 led to backing men’s grooming brand Beardo, culminating in a reported acquisition at a valuation of ₹350 crore in mid-2020. Shah shared the chronology and numbers in a first-person reflection, crediting founders Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah for outlier execution in an era when “D2C” was not yet common parlance in India.

A conviction formed in minutes

Shah says he was in his third year as a seed investor when a persistent question, why men’s personal care had so few India-focused brands, set the stage for his search. The turning point came in September 2016, when he first spoke with the Ahmedabad duo behind Beardo.

According to Shah, the bootstrapped brand was already generating ~₹50 lakh in revenue with ~20% PAT, and the founders’ mission sprang from solving their own grooming needs.

Within 10 minutes of that first call, Shah says he decided to champion the deal at his investment committee. Zeropearl joined the seed round, helped by an introduction from Apoorva (a collaborator with whom Shah notes he had also co-invested in Suprdaily, later sold to Swiggy).

Brand-building before the playbook

Among the early signals Shah highlights:

• Celebrity equity deal: Beardo brought on actor Suniel Shetty as a brand ambassador on equity, with no cash, which Shah frames as unconventional for the time.
• Community first: The brand, he says, nurtured “brand love” before a D2C playbook was standard, and consistently thought “blue ocean.”

The result, in Shah’s words, was “Zhakaas” traction in the first year.

Rapid scale and a patient exit

Per Shah’s account, within 12 months Beardo had scaled to a ~₹24 crore annual run rate. Marico Limited made a strategic investment in 2017. While an exit was possible then, Shah says Zeropearl chose to continue alongside the founders until mid-2020, when the company was acquired at a valuation of ₹350 crore. With only ~₹3 crore raised and “no back-to-back funding,” Shah says seed investors realized about a 10x return—at a time when sizable D2C exits were still rare in India.

Backing the founders again at RENÉE

Shah adds that when Valani and Shah later built RENÉE Cosmetics, Zeropearl re-invested a significant portion of the Beardo gains. This time, Shah recounts, the founders told him they intend to build for the long term and aim for an IPO, and he in turn committed continued support. He also notes that both founders invested in Zeropearl Fund-1, underscoring what he describes as a relationship that goes beyond capital.

Takeaway and open call

For Shah, the episode reinforces a core investing lesson: not every strong decision follows prolonged deliberation, “Sometimes conviction is instant.” He closes with an open invitation to founders to apply at zpvc.live/form, adding that he personally reviews applications within 36 hours.

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