Lavanya Jayashankar: From global consumer insights to connecting India’s promising food businesses with growth capital

Lavanya Jayashankar’s journey has taken her from advertising and consumer insights in Singapore and London to building ventures in India, including a craft gin brand and a design-thinking consultancy. Drawn back by India’s startup moment, she now leads Hotshare, which helps promising food and beverage businesses raise capital to grow. Her path to this venture has been shaped by a life spent moving across cities, countries and careers.

She has lived in 22 homes across India, Singapore and London, and travelled to over 20 countries for work. “If I were to sum myself up, I’d say I’m a bit of a nomad. I have sand in my shoes and I’m always looking to move to the next thing, whether it’s a home, a city or a career,” smiles Lavanya Jayashankar in an interview with The Global Indian, The founder of Hotshare divides her time between Goa and Bengaluru.

Long before she started backing businesses, she was a child constantly packing boxes and on the move. The daughter of a civil servant, she attended eight schools before finishing Class 12, growing up across places such as Darbhanga, Dhanbad and Kochi.

Every few years meant a new classroom, new neighbours, new languages and new friendships; changes that she learnt to embrace. “I think, today, my greatest strength is that I belong everywhere. I can adapt to different cultures, speak multiple languages and understand different ways of living. That ability has shaped every decision I’ve made,” she shares.

Exploring cultures through food

Her journey took her to Singapore, where she studied and worked, before a stint in London. Professionally, she moved through advertising, strategy, consumer insights and design thinking: roles that demanded curiosity more than certainty.

Consumer insights, in particular, became a turning point. Unlike conventional market research built around surveys and data, her job involved spending hours in people’s houses all over the globe. “We would look at their kitchens, bedrooms and cabinets, and understand how they lived.”

Over five years, the work took her to more than 20 countries and made her realise that food was far more than just sustenance. “It provides an excellent shorthand into culture. You can visit museums and galleries to understand what a culture built. But food tells you how people live today.”

It even became an obsession of sorts and there were times she secured reservations at restaurants as soon as a project was confirmed. “Even on holidays, I often booked restaurants before I booked my flights,” she laughs.

A return driven by FOMO

Despite enjoying a global career, there came a time when she felt like a missing piece of the Indian startup puzzle. With venture capital flowing in; entrepreneurs building companies at an unprecedented pace, and turning heads on the global stage, she wanted to actively participate in India’s innovation economy.

“Honestly, it was a bit of FOMO,” she admits. “Reading about Indian startups from abroad, I felt like there was a zeitgeist happening that I wasn’t a part of.”

So, when an opportunity arose to relocate and establish her employer’s India office, she seized it. Initially, it was meant to be temporary but instead, it changed the course of her life.

Once back in India, entrepreneurship no longer felt like a distant ambition. She first launched a design-thinking consultancy before co-founding Matinee, a craft gin brand that emerged during India’s premium spirits revolution.

Working in the alco-bev industry opened yet another window to the world. She gained a first-hand understanding of manufacturing, regulation, distribution and the challenges of building a consumer brand in India. More importantly, she built relationships across the country’s food and beverage ecosystem.

These proved to be the building blocks for Hotshare, an investment and growth platform that connects retail investors and capital with food and beverage (F&B) operators, that she founded in December 2024.

 

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Thinking outside the box

According to Lavanya, investors often look at F&B ventures through the lens of conventional businesses. However, restaurants don’t fit neatly into those boxes

as their success depends on disciplined day to day execution, operational consistency and the ability to deliver the same quality, every single day.

Hotshare aims to bridge this gap by positioning hospitality as a serious investment asset class alongside sectors such as technology and real estate. Instead of chasing dozens of new brands, it looks for founders who have already demonstrated profitability and operational excellence before helping them raise growth capital.

In its first year itself, the company evaluated more than 40 businesses but invested in only a handful including Bengaluru’s NĀVU and Beyondburg Inc. following a deliberately selective approach. “We’re not looking for passion alone. We’re looking for operators who have already shown they know how to make the business work.” She further adds, “Our ambition isn’t speed or scale. We want to become the definitive platform with the strongest lens for identifying exceptional ventures.”

The ‘purrfect’ calling

A feline welfare activist, Lavanya has been part of the Purrfect Love team during the pandemic. Its a volunteer-led collective that has rehabilitated more than 300 cats through rescue, fostering, adoption and sterilisation programmes.

“We decided to bring the same professional frameworks we use at work into animal welfare.” The volunteers, mostly working professionals, rely on scientific veterinary guidelines, structured systems and careful processes rather than emotion alone.

She now coordinates much of the work remotely from Goa, using her spare time to find homes for cats. “I interview people, do video house checks and train them on how to care for cats,” she explains.

Backing India’s food future

To an outsider, advertising, consumer insights, design thinking, gin and now an investment platform may seem like disconnected chapters. But for Lavanya, they are simply different expressions of the same thing. “They are all about understanding how people live and building something for them. When I look back and connect the dots, it feels like I was always meant to be in this industry.”

She encourages budding investors to look beyond traditional asset classes such as stocks, mutual funds, real estate and gold, and think about the role their capital can play in shaping new industries. “Return should be the baseline no doubt,” she says. “But the bigger question should be: how much of your capital is helping build the future of an industry?”

Looking ahead, she feels that India is “having its moment in the sun” as it occupies a pride of place on the international culinary scene. “The boom should be sustained and the natural way to do so is to invest in it. Investors need to capitalise it, and consumers need to understand they’re paying for an experience that simply wasn’t available before.”

When asked what excites her most about India’s food and beverage industry, and she doesn’t mention regional cuisines, indigenous ingredients or culinary trends, but the mindset that’s shaping its future. “The future is India building for itself and the nation’s greatest export to the industry will be confidence,” she sums up.

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