Unwala’s Avesta Bloodstock making quiet investment as portfolio quickly soars
Darley Flying Start graduate creates big impression with broodmare-focused trading partnership
Avesta Bloodstock is a name the Australian thoroughbred industry is about to hear a lot more about, but the man behind the business has not suddenly appeared on the scene and he has been quietly acquiring a significant bloodstock portfolio heavily leveraged towards broodmares.
When Jimmy Unwala left Aquis Farm last November after a three-year stint, his Avesta Bloodstock operation was already well advanced and that momentum has continued into 2021.
His departure expedited the Darley Flying Start graduate’s plans for Avesta Bloodstock, which now has about 100 horses under management. Eighty of those are broodmares, while a mixture of weanlings and yearlings, some of which will be reoffered at the two-year-old breeze-up auctions, are being prepared for next season’s sales.
“What I have realised in my time here (in Australia) from successful people was having smaller shares across a lot of horses is probably better business because it is a business that works in the safety of numbers,” Unwala told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“Because my background is in pedigrees, as in breeding, and because I did the noms for the past ten years, I saw a lot of small breeders struggle selling the product or making a commercial return and I would witness people getting dejected and not being able to sell a yearling properly, so I thought the problem was that they didn’t have quality and, at the same time, they didn’t have the numbers.
“It is all well and good to buy a cheap mare and hope that you get a good horse and get lucky, but that is the exception to the rule.
“The norm says quality does and quality sells through most cases and I thought if I put all those people together and they take small percentages in a big portfolio, they will have a better chance of having success and enjoying it, while not losing money, and that’s what we did.”
When Unwala floated the idea with friends and trusted clients he immediately gained their support and Avesta Bloodstock was off the ground.
This year, the broodmare band – the majority of which are boarding on about 12 farms in the Hunter Valley – will be covered by stallions in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia as the Avesta brand’s reach and scale grows.
“This year, we might go past 100 broodmares that we will send out to different stallions,” he said.
“I don’t have an affiliation with any one stud or any one stallion farm. It is about breeding the right mare to the right stallion at the right value to produce not only a good horse, but also a commercial horse and that’s what we will be doing this year.”
Unwala, who has invested his own money into the partnership alongside about 12 backers including G1G Racing and Breeding’s Gary Diamond, says he does not have all the answers but he is confident that his approach can prove a success while also revealing he has no qualms in seeking the opinion of other industry identities.
He singled out Duncan Grimley, who recently sold his Hunter Valley stud Glastonbury Farms, and Rothwell Park’s Scott Irwin as people he respected.
“It is expanding quickly, and I like that fact, but I also understand that it is baby steps. You learn as you go along, you can never know it all, and I am always happy to ask questions and learn from others to try and improve what we do,” he said.
“I was happy to see so many people wanted to team up and join us and go forward. It is quite rewarding and quite satisfying that they back my judgement as, without their support, Avesta Bloodstock does not exist.”
To help diversify the portfolio, Unwala added an Invader (Snitzel) colt for $35,000 with the view of reoffering him at the two-year-old ready to run sales later this year, while he was at Inglis’ Riverside Stables yesterday inspecting weanlings to pinhook at next year’s yearling sales.
“We are looking for something that we can buy and that we can then trade and take a bit of profit, but pinhooking is hard,” Unwala said.
“Because we have a group of people behind us, we can go and buy something nice and if someone else buys something that we like, I always ask the question whether we can come in and take a share as well.
“It just doesn’t have to be under the Avesta brand.”
By his own admission, Unwala has been happy to “fly under the radar”, so the reach of the Avesta Bloodstock may come as a surprise to some industry observers.
“It’s grown because we’ve found value. What helped Avesta and my friends, my clients and backers, was that the year that was the Covid year, we luckily had the funds to buy mares of good quality,” he said.
“We look back now and think what we bought last year was way under market value, and that is the reason we haven’t traded them this year.
“Where Covid was bad for a lot of other businesses, it really helped Avesta to buy good stock at the right price.”
A reserved Unwala believes his experience with Godolphin and, more recently, Aquis Farm holds him in good stead overseeing his own business.
“When I first came to Australia, no one knew who I was and I wanted to go through the grades. I wanted to earn my stripes before I went out on my own and Darley was a very good grounding for me because they were a very upfront, straightforward organisation and I learned my trade from there,” he said.
“I learned how to understand pedigrees and how to understand stock with that organisation and that gave me a good grounding.
“When I thought I’d reached my ceiling at that organisation and I wanted to do a bit more commercially … Aquis came along and that was a bit more of a trading unit and that’s when I thought, ‘maybe it is a good time to experience how to market horses and syndicate horses and shares in stallions’, so it has been a very good ten years.
“There was a time when I was going to go out on my own eventually and it just so happens with Covid that it worked out well [timing wise].”
A passionate Unwala, 35, is adamant the Australian racing and breeding industry provides a tremendous grounding for young people to achieve their goals.
His view comes at a time when the sector faces a “staffing crisis”, exacerbated by the pandemic which has limited the supply of international workers.
“I feel that Australia is a great country for young people getting involved in horses because it gives you a really good opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stablehand or you are working in a racing stable or you’re just mucking out a box, it is a rewarding industry,” he said.
“For someone like me, who came from India, I was given an opportunity to mix with the best people and the best breeders and I’m very grateful for that.
“I would encourage anyone who is young and likes horses to be part of it.”