Blume Ventures, one of the most prominent and among the oldest homegrown venture capital firms in India, has announced the first close of its fourth fund. The firm has raised $105Mn so far, for a possibly $200Mn fund that Blume is expecting to close. At that number, it could easily be among the largest India-based funds so far.
The fund, which was founded in 2010 with an aim to bridge the glaring gap between angel funding and institutional startup investment, counts several high profile companies in its portfolio. Started with a $20Mn Fund 1 back in 2011, Blume Ventures has since backed the likes of TaxiForSure (acquired by Ola), online learning platform Unacademy, fintech Slice, hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo, edtech Classplus among others. Typically, Blume Ventures writes cheques in the range of $1Mn to $2.5Mn and invest in pre-Seed rounds.
Blume is looking to close the fund at about $200 million by March-April next year, managing partner Karthik Reddy told Moneycontrol.com, making it Blume’s largest fund so far, double its $105 million third fund. The fund has invested in 25 companies from its third fund, with some money still left for fresh/follow-up investments.
“There is no precedent for the current environment. We have to be sensible but not conservative, which is also what we are telling our founders. We are trying to be thoughtful about it,” Reddy said.
The closure couldn’t have come at a better time. India has produced a record number of unicorns this year, even galloping ahead of China for the year 2021. Bottom of the pyramid fundraising has too picked up pace, with the likes of Tiger Global, Sequoia India among others writing cheques at an unprecedented pace. Post-pandemic, edtech, fintech and healthtech have easily emerged as hot investment sectors. Deep-tech startups continue to draw the attention they have, even before pandemic times.
From the new fund, Blume Ventures will continue investing in pre-seed to Pre Series A technology startups in sectors such as consumer internet, small and medium business marketplaces, as well as global opportunities in software & enterprise technology being addressed by Indian founders.
