Restaurant investment: How Hotshare backs profitable outlets
Around Rs 10,000 crore was deployed into India’s F&B business in 2025, yet 80% of restaurants close within their first five years, according to Lavanya Jayashankar, founder and CEO of the F&B investment platform Hotshare.
Hotshare funds restaurant businesses with Rs 50 lakh to Rs 5 crore, focusing on outlets that have already demonstrated their ability to survive.
Restaurant investment and the Hotshare model
Hotshare raises capital for profitable restaurants and bars at the outlet level.
Lavanya says the platform is looking at the gap between institutional capital for large chains and informal funding for individual restaurants. “My play here is to say, let's identify those 20,” she says.
Lavanya describes a group of profitable entrepreneurs who remain under-capitalized because investors often assess restaurants using technology and direct-to-consumer frameworks.
Hotshare instead evaluates outlets as income-generating assets, where value comes primarily from operating cash flows.
One of Hotshare’s portfolio companies is Beyondburg, a burger brand that began in Bengaluru in 2017 as a four-seater kiosk selling 40 to 50 burgers daily.
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Co-founder Mohammed Anas says the brand sells approximately 3,000 burgers a day and has opened its sixth location.
Anas started Beyondburg with Ajmal and Nishaf after meeting them during a holiday in Bengaluru. The founders operated the kiosk for almost three years before rebuilding the business as a scalable brand, beginning with a flagship outlet in Calicut.
“There is a vast middle of profitable, successful entrepreneurs who are under-capitalized,” Lavanya says. She says selected outlets offer a projected 15% to 20% post-tax internal rate of return over five to seven years, with returns distributed through profit sharing.
Beyondburg has stayed focused on burgers despite requests for additional dishes, while working on procurement, kitchen throughput, training and consistency across locations. At its Indiranagar outlet, Anas says the business sells 700 to 800 burgers a day.
Lavanya first met Anas in December 2024, when Hotshare was developing its investment framework.
She says Beyondburg’s historical financial information, outlet-level profitability and central systems helped shape the platform’s evaluation checklist. The company’s service quality also contributed to Lavanya’s conviction in the business.
Beyondburg tested the concept with limited capital, built systems before expanding and kept its product proposition narrow. “Hospitality is an execution business; it is not an ideas business,” Lavanya says.
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