New Delhi— Homegrown venture fund Blume Ventures, which focuses on early-stage technology-led startups, on Wednesday announced it has closed its Fund IV at over $250 million, bringing the firms asset under management (AUM) to over $600 million.
Established in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath, Blume backs entrepreneurs either building to solve large impactful Indian problems or taking the best of Indian innovation to global markets.
“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 Nath.
The diverse mandate extends from edtech, fintech, health, commerce and consumer internet to robotics and AI to software-as-a-service (SaaS) and enterprise software.
Blume Fund IV will be managed by its more than 15 member investment team led by Sajith Pai, Arpit Agarwal, Ashish Fafadia, Nath and Reddy.
“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 Fafadia, one of Blume’s partners.
Launched as a “Superangel” fund in 2011, Blume raised $20 million in Fund I and invested in over 60 startups, 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.
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, among others. (IANS)
