Early stage investor Blume Ventures is planning to raise $80-100 million new corpus by March next year. This would be the third fund for Karthik Reddy-led venture capital firm. Earlier, it raised $80 million across two funds, and invested in about 75 startups.
With the third fund, Blume looks to tap new limited partners (LPs). According to a Mint report, the firm targets to raise new corpus from new LPs. The new LPs aim to contribute 50-60% of the new fund while remaining will come from existing partners.
Blume’S LPs comprises of domestic as well as offshore investors. In its second fund of $60 million, Blume had secured about $40 million from overseas investors. The same pattern is likely to be followed by Blume while raising fresh funds.
“We want to be called the best institution to provide pre-series A and Series A funding and want to raise close to $100 million for our third fund. We don’t want to be a classic Series A fund, but we want entrepreneurs to come to us for initial capital after the family rounds and before they go to other institutional players,” said Reddy to Mint.
Over the past one year, several India focused VC firms had raised new corpus. Three months ago, SAIF Partners had raised $350 million in its third India focused fund.
Last year, Sequoia Capital India, the country’s largest venture capital firm, raised $920 million for its fifth successive India-focused fund. Accel Partners India raised its fifth Indian-focused fund in tune of $450 million.
Blume Ventures plans to kick-off fund-raising activity early next year. The third fund would continue backing startups across sectors, however, it will focus on the healthcare sector. The Mumbai-based fund will eye opportunities in health tech, health food, health information space, et al.
“Consumer problems like traffic congestion, power, small businesses, media, and education will also be our focus,” revealed Reddy.
So far, Blume Ventures had invested in about 75 startups, however, it exited from only handful of companies including mobile marketing and analytics platform ZipDial and cab-hailing startup Taxiforsure. “Blume’s portfolio currently is sitting on unrealized gains of 2x invested capital. The firm, however, plans to return at least 4x what it raised from LPs,” mentioned report.
