Ashish Hemrajani
Founder & CEO, BookMyShow; Angel Investor
Reviewed Updated Jun 25, 2026This profile is AI-generated. If you spot an error, please help us fix it by sharing a URL to the correct information.
Background
Ashish Hemrajani is the founder and CEO of BookMyShow (legal entity: Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.), India’s largest entertainment ticketing platform. He co-founded the company in 1999 with Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande after completing his MBA at Sydenham Institute of Management and a stint at advertising agency J. Walter Thompson 12. Based in Mumbai, he remains CEO of BookMyShow more than 25 years after founding it 1.
His angel investing has been intermittent rather than systematic — a typical “operator angel” profile. Aggregator sites count his portfolio between 12 and 20 companies, depending on whether co-investments and follow-ons are deduplicated 345. His most recent recorded investment was a November 2024 round in Instahyre 5.
Stated Thesis
Hemrajani has not published a formal investment thesis. In interviews he repeatedly emphasizes value over valuation and long-term durability over hyper-growth optics: “I have nothing against Unicorns, it is a great validation to be valued at billion dollars plus. My only concern is that it should not be the only purpose. The purpose of business is to draw from society, create value and be valuable back to society” 6. He has described himself as “not a unicorn… a cockroach because we survive” — a self-description that aligns with the kind of capital-efficient, resilience-oriented founder he tends to back 7.
Aggregator profiles describe his angel focus as fintech, edtech, SaaS, and media at seed and pre-seed stages, though this is a third-party characterization rather than a stated thesis from Hemrajani himself 4.
Inferred Thesis
Hemrajani is operator-primary: his day job is running BookMyShow, and his angel activity is a side practice. With only a handful of verifiable individual checks, percentage-based sector breakdowns would be meaningless. Qualitatively, from the verified portfolio below:
- Stage: Predominantly seed and Series A, with no pre-seed or growth-stage checks visible in public records 35.
- Geography: Almost entirely India-based founders and companies, consistent with his domestic operator network 3.
- Sector concentration: Fintech and payments infrastructure (Juspay, Jupiter, Pazcare), HR/talent tech (Instahyre, Fasthr), and consumer/media-adjacent (Invideo, MetaMan) — sectors where his BookMyShow consumer-internet operating experience is most legible 35.
- Notable outcome: One unicorn in the portfolio (Juspay, payments infrastructure) 3.
- Founder profile: Bias toward second-time founders and operators with prior consumer-internet or fintech experience, based on the limited sample.
Sample size caveat: Tracxn lists ~19 portfolio companies, Razorpay Rize lists ~13, and Inc42 lists ~14 345. The delta reflects aggregator inconsistency, not disagreement about whether he’s active. Treat the inferred thesis as directional, not statistical.
Portfolio
| Company | Year | Stage | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juspay | ~2014 (founding year proxy) | Angel/Seed | 3 |
| GetFocus | 2014 | Seed | 3 |
| Invideo | ~2017 (founding year proxy) | Angel | 3 |
| Instahyre | 2024-11-08 | Follow-on/Angel | 5 |
| Pazcare | 2022 | Series A | 3 |
| Fasthr | 2022 | Seed | 3 |
| Punt Partners | 2022 | Seed | 3 |
| VS Mani & Co | 2022 | Seed | 3 |
| Jupiter | ~2019 (founding year proxy) | Angel | 3 |
| ~unknown | Park+ | — | Angel |
| ~unknown | MetaMan Fragrances | — | Seed |
This table represents the publicly verifiable checks across Tracxn, Inc42, and Razorpay Rize. Aggregators claim 12-20 total investments; this is approximately 55-75% coverage 345.
In Their Own Words
On valuations and purpose:
“I have nothing against Unicorns, it is a great validation to be valued at billion dollars plus. My only concern is that it should not be the only purpose. The purpose of business is to draw from society, create value and be valuable back to society.” — TechSparks 2020 6
On survival and self-image:
“I am not a unicorn. I am a cockroach because we survive.” — FactorDaily Outliers podcast, September 2017 7
On market cycles:
“No good times and bad times are permanent.” — FactorDaily Outliers podcast 7
On competition:
“If you just follow your competition then either he is going to outbid you or you are going to outbid him. Both are going to be bereft of ideas.” — FactorDaily Outliers podcast 7
On failure:
“I don’t look at it as failure, I look at it as learnings.” — FactorDaily Outliers podcast 7
On hiring:
“Because skills keep morphing and they can be taught along the way. That X factor, or that edge where the person has something that you may not have, is what we look for.” — TechSparks 2020 6
What Founders Say
No independently sourced founder testimonials about Hemrajani’s angel investing behavior were found in public press, podcasts, or social media at the time of research. Hemrajani’s portfolio companies (Juspay, Pazcare, Instahyre, etc.) have not publicly attributed specific support or behavior to him as an individual angel that could be quoted verbatim. This section should be updated when independently verifiable founder quotes become available.
Sources
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BookMyShow / Bigtree Entertainment company profile, Tracxn, accessed June 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/bookmyshow/__4Bnn_OR_VTevkoClPypgaK-Aa4T8qdc9VVcRAhyViFo↩↩
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Ashish Hemrajani LinkedIn profile, accessed June 2026. https://in.linkedin.com/in/ashishhemrajani↩
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Ashish Hemrajani portfolio, Tracxn, accessed June 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/people/ashish-hemrajani/__8eagkgWuOJxmSYgHq52Mh8IBL86JQV1iL7KgJoV5z2A↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
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Ashish Hemrajani investor list, Razorpay Rize, accessed June 2026. https://razorpay.com/rize/investors-list/ashish-hemrajani↩↩↩↩
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Ashish Hemrajani person profile, Inc42, accessed June 2026. https://inc42.com/person/ashish-hemrajani/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
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“Top lessons for entrepreneurs from BookMyShow’s Ashish Hemrajani at TechSparks 2020,” YourStory, November 2020, accessed June 2026. https://yourstory.com/2020/11/bookmyshow-ashish-hemrajani-cinema-ott-netflix↩↩↩
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“I am not a unicorn. I am a cockroach because we survive,” FactorDaily Outliers podcast interview with Pankaj Mishra, September 2017, accessed June 2026. https://archive.factordaily.com/ashish-hemrajani-bookmyshow-interview/↩↩↩↩↩