Blume Ventures Closes Its Fourth Fund At Upwards Of $250 Million

Blume Ventures has announced the close of its Fund IV at over $250 million, bringing its assets under management (AUM) to over $600 million. Some of its investors include family offices from India and overseas, sovereign wealth funds and emerging market Fund of Funds. 

The home-grown venture fund, which focuses on early-stage, technology-led start-ups, claimed that Fund IV was oversubscribed on the $200 million target with support from existing and new investors.

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 to 35 companies across different technology verticals, it will discover and nurture another generation of industry-defining start-ups built in this cycle. 

Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath established Blume in 2010 and it is now over 35 professionals strong, outside of its two sister concerns, Constellation Blu and Metamorph. Its diverse mandate extends from edtech, fintech, health, commerce and consumer internet to robotics and AI to SaaS and enterprise software. 

Nath said, "Whether building domestically or for global markets, the best founders and limited partners (LPs) would like to work with a Fund that can be considered world-class, which has spurred us to keep institutionalising and to bolster 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 and higher quality first-time founders. We're excited for Blume to become the preferred seed partner for both categories."

Launched as a 'Superangel' fund in 2011, Blume raised $20 million in Fund I and invested in over 60 start-ups, promoting the idea of home-grown micro VCs, with domestic investor participation playing an essential role in each of its funds. The first fund vintage backed start-ups, including 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. Its portfolio stars born from 2015 to 2020 include Unacademy, Slice, Spinny, dunzo, Classplus, Servify, Lambdatest, Koo, Locus, HealthifyMe, smallcase, Euler, Jai Kisan and Pixxel.

Blume has dozens of category creators or category winners in its portfolio across its three fund portfolios. These include 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.  

Endorsing this full stack and deeper approach from Blume in their journey, Shivkumar Ganesan, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Exotel, said, "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, added, "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 our strong partner. 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 introducing us to key future investors."