By: Matt Emma
Ajar Rajbhandary learned about supply chains, profit margins, and customer preferences working behind the counter in a small shop his parents owned. There, he honed the business skills that would eventually evolve into Herd, a game-changer in the e-commerce industry.
Herd is a rapidly growing modern house of brands in the e-commerce space, designed around a desire to radically rethink how brands grow and how to foster communities in our digital economy.
“At Herd, we take the fundamentals of business and supercharge them with data,” Rajbhandary explains. “This way we can predict demand before the market sees it, designing products people love, and scaling them across retail channels.”
From his parents’ small shop, Rajbhandary now competes head-to-head with the world’s largest consumer brands and marketing initiatives.
Founder-Led Marketing Strategies That Are Actionable, And Brands Moving Together
During his time at Emory University, Rajbhandary saw firsthand how legacy brand-building practices and customer engagement created silos. The entrepreneur saw an opportunity to build a community instead. In 2024, he started Herd as a portfolio company that leveraged creativity, artificial intelligence (AI), and deep operational expertise, uniting brands to help them scale globally.
Through forward-thinking investments in AI infrastructure, Herd’s team was able to automate operations across a growing roster of reputable consumer brands that sold at Target, Walmart, and Amazon. The team has also been able to identify opportunities more quickly through AI data analysis, enabling Herd to move forward at a faster pace and more sustainably than its competitors.
By 2025, Herd’s creativity and AI-driven capabilities became apparent, with the startup demonstrating solid revenue growth and expanding its presence in the marketplace.
“We are built on the foundational idea that brands thrive when they move together — as a ‘herd’ — and become anchored to the community,” says Rajbhandary. In just over one year, Herd has grown from nothing to over $15 million in revenue, boasting thousands of 5-star reviews and reaching millions of customers.
Nurturing Communities Behind The Scenes With Authenticity, Creating Personal Brands, And Thought Leadership
The idea of nurturing communities is at the heart of Rajbhandary’s business philosophy. He feels that growth is not just a function of numbers, but a byproduct of meaningful relationships between brands and the people who love and support them.
Rajbhandary is hopeful he can redefine customer interactions, not treating them just as transactional endpoints, but as partners in mutually beneficial relationships.
“A strong brand knows how to connect with its audience through cultural awareness, authenticity, and adaptation,” he says. “Brands need to be aligned to buyer behavior and local culture.”
Using AI-driven insights as its backbone and creative approaches to engagement, Herd is a facilitator to community belonging — not just commerce.
Challenges Of Founder-Led Brands And Lessons Learned
Much like the founder-led brands the company works with, Herd has faced its own challenges. And like many startups, they’ve learned lessons from those challenges and applied what they learned as they’ve grown.
Rajbhandary admits that one of his main challenges has been maintaining authenticity as his operation has scaled. As Herd took on new brands and expanded into new markets, he struggled to hold his community ethos at the center of the company’s mission.
To approach this challenge and turn it into a positive for his venture, Rajbhandary focused on fostering transparent communication and value-aligned decision-making to build authentic brand awareness and connect with his target audience. He knew that his actions needed to reflect his stated values, drawing inspiration from companies whose purpose-driven platforms created a fiercely loyal customer base and engaged employees.
At Herd, authenticity and innovation are not opposing forces; they are complementary. Rajbhandary continues to apply the lessons he has learned as Herd has grown, ensuring consistent alignment between the company’s values and its everyday practices.
Leaders As Community-Builders Who Build Trust And Amplify Engagement
Rajbhandary is vocal about CEOs and other leaders building communities, rather than just adopting a traditional approach to their operations. “Future business leaders need to embrace their roles not only in the C-Suite, but as facilitators of community and belonging,” he explains. For the startup founder, adhering to a traditional business approach with a solely operational focus overlooks the nuances of global commerce, particularly e-commerce, which can sometimes feel like a faceless void.
CEOs who actively listen, observe, adapt, and advocate for their market and the communities their brands serve can foster open dialogue and empower both their staff and their customers. Through this more engaged approach, communities can thrive, marketing efforts are more effective, and brands can move forward together.
Rajbhandary and his team are dedicated to moving Herd forward and setting a precedent for the e-commerce industry. Through leveraging AI technology and operational expertise, Herd is practicing a holistic approach to commerce that prioritizes people over products. Rajbhandary regularly engages across social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, to connect and interact with both brands and customers, keeping the mission of helping people connect at the center of each interaction.
The company is well-positioned for long-term success, poised to become a major player in the e-commerce industry, helping brands move forward together.
