SUMMARY
The fund has been backed by Indian and global family offices, sovereign wealth funds and Fund of Funds
Blume invests in startups operating in diverse sectors including edtech, fintech, health, commerce, consumer internet, AI, SaaS and enterprise software, among others
Its portfolio includes Grey Orange, Carbon Clean, Slice, Turtlemint, smallcase, Exotel, Lambdatest, Unacademy, Classplus, Purplle, Dunzo, Healthifyme and Tricog, among others
Early-stage venture fund Blume Ventures has announced the final closure of its $250 Mn fund (Fund IV). The fund has a corpus of $200 Mn and has been oversubscribed by $50 Mn.
The fund has been backed by Indian and global family offices, sovereign wealth funds and Fund of Funds. It will be managed by a team of more than 15 people and has backed around 35 startups working across diverse tech-enabled sectors.
“The fund size, diversity of LPs and oversubscription is a testament to the coming of age of Blume, the institution. We will continue to work and evolve with our portfolio’s needs and build large companies that India will be proud of,” said Ashish Fafadia, partner at Blume Ventures.
Founded in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath, Blume Ventures invests in startups operating in diverse sectors such as edtech, fintech, health, commerce, consumer internet, AI, SaaS and enterprise software, among others. It claims that its AUM is over $600 Mn.
Blume’s portfolio includes Grey Orange, Carbon Clean, Slice, Turtlemint, smallcase, Exotel, Lambdatest, Unacademy, Classplus, Purplle, Dunzo, Healthifyme, BeatO, Tricog, Euler, Yulu and BatterySmart, among others.
“Thanks to an increasing reality of IPO and M&A exits, there is a resurgence of 2x founders and operators, as well as higher quality first-time founders. We’re excited for Blume to become the preferred seed partner of choice for both categories,” said Sanjay Nath, partner at Blume Ventures.
The VC currently has a team of 35 professionals. So far, it has launched three funds – $20 Mn Fund I, $60 Mn Fund II and $102 Fund III. These funds infused money in various startups– Zopper, Webengage, IDfy, Slice, Spinny, Pixxel, Servify, Lambdatest and Koo, to name a few.
Besides the above-cited funds, it also manages continuity funds, secondary funds (Fund I winners), opportunity funds (Fund I and II winners) and SPVs.
The fund has been launched at a time when the startup ecosystem has been experiencing a slowdown. Funding crunch, negative market sentiment, global disruption and market inflation are some of the factors that are hampering the progress of growth-stage and late-stage startups.
Besides, investors are also scrutinising portfolio startups and showing less confidence in backing startups further. On the flip side, venture capital firms are making use of the current scenario and are either introducing or closing their VC funds.
AUM Ventures’ maiden VC fund, 8i Ventures’ $50 Mn fund and SphitiCap’s $500 Mn fund are some of the VC funds that have been introduced recently to back Indian startups.
