Blume Ventures, India’s leading homegrown venture fund has announced the close of its Fund IV at over $250million bringing the firm’s AUM to over $600 million. Blume focuses on early-stage, innovative technology-led startups. Blume backs entrepreneurs either building to solve large impactful Indian problems or taking the best of Indian innovation to global markets. The diverse mandate extends from edtech, fintech, health, commerce and consumer internet in the former to robotics and AI to SaaS and enterprise software in the latter category.  These themes have been consistent through Blume’s 12 years of existence.

Blume has received emphatic support from all its previous supporters. Blume’s Fund IV investors include some of India’s finest family offices, global family offices, sovereign wealth funds (India and overseas), and emerging market Fund of Funds. The oversubscription on the $200 million target and the support from both existing and new investors is a testament to the track record that continues to grow stronger.

Blume Fund IV will be managed by its 15+ member investment team led by Sajith Pai, Arpit Agarwal, Ashish Fafadia, Sanjay Nath and Karthik Reddy. Investing in 30-35 companies across different technology verticals, Blume will discover and nurture another generation of industry-defining companies built in this cycle.

 Blume was established in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath.  Blume is now over 35 professionals strong (outside of Constellation Blu and Metamorph, our two sister concerns), the leadership team has grown to 10, and they collectively grow and mentor a roster of young emerging stars on the team.

Sanjay Nath added, “We are grateful to our anchor supporters and new believers who have emphatically backed Blume IV. Whether building domestically or for global markets, the best founders and LPs would like to work with a Fund that can be considered world-class, which has spurred us to keep institutionalizing and bolstering our platform, team and capabilities. 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.”

Some key milestones:

• Launched as a “Superangel” fund in 2011, Blume raised $20 million in Fund I and invested in over 60 startups, pioneering the idea of home-grown micro VCs, with domestic investor participation playing an important role in each of its funds. The first fund vintage has many winners that are incredibly stable after a decade of persistence. These include Purplle, Grey Orange, Turtlemint, Carbon Clean, Exotel, Cashify, Zopper, Webengage, and IDfy.

• Blume raised successor Funds in 2015-16 and 2018-19, growing to a $60 million Fund II and a $102 million Fund III, maturing into a fund with increased reserves to deploy into the best breakout companies. The Blume stars born from the 2015 to 2020 era are Unacademy, Slice, Spinny, dunzo, Classplus, Servify, Lambdatest, Koo, Locus, Healthifyme, smallcase, Euler, Jai Kisan and Pixxel, amongst others.

The strength of the platform makes Blume an ideal partner in the founders’ journey, bringing value far beyond the capital in the bank. Some of these platform value additions are powered by Capital and Market Networks teams, the depth of reserves between its own funds and its diverse set of vibrant LPs, and the platform partners in Constellation (finance and legal) and MetaMorph (talent).

Blume is also a market leader in emerging market segments where technology shapes new business models or disrupts older ones. It has dozens of category creators or category winners in its portfolio across its three fund portfolios: Grey Orange and Carbon Clean in deep tech; Slice, Turtlemint and Smallcase in Fintech; Exotel and Lambdatest in Software; Unacademy and Classplus in Edtech; Purplle and dunzo in commerce; Healthifyme, BeatO and Tricog in Healthtech; Euler, Yulu and BatterySmart in EV Mobility.

Blume manages Continuity funds in addition to the above funds. These include secondary funds (Fund I winners), opportunity funds (Fund I and II winners) and SPVs.

Shivkumar Ganesan, CEO and co-founder of Exotel, endorses this full stack and deeper approach from Blume in their journey. “Blume has been a great partner for us. They were the first ones to bet on us and continued to do so through thick and thin! Without their support, I cannot imagine Exotel to have become the company it is today.”

Manish Taneja, CEO and co-founder of Purplle, exemplifies what is now a classic Blume relationship. “My relationship with Blume Ventures dates back to 2010-11, when Karthik and Sanjay were raising their first fund. Blume invested in Purplle in 2013 and has been a strong partner for us ever since. Ashish (our Board Member from Blume), has been on our Board since 2013 and has played a key role in guiding us, helping us with Board dynamics and also introducing us to key future investors. Blume is truly a founder’s first VC and Blume’s partners are best in class. I wish Blume a lot of success and I also wish more firms get access to Blume’s capital.”