Blume Ventures makes final close of Fund III at $102 Mn

Blume Ventures, one of the most active venture capital firms among early-stage startups, has closed its third fund at $102 million. In its decade-old journey, Blume had made the first close at $19 million in first year of operations followed by $60 million Fund II in 2016, and the latest in December.

According to Blume, it has become the first homegrown fund to raise a third fund and also over $100 million in a single fund.

Blume had marked the first close of Fund III at $45 million in October 2018. Since then, it has invested in over 10 startups focused on healthcare, consumer internet, agritech, deeptech, and others.

HealthAssure, Taaraka, Stage3, Jai Kisan, TartanSense, Procol, Classplus, Tapchief, LeverageEdu, AgaraLabs, Lambda Test, Ethereal Machines and Euler Motors have raised money from Fund III.

The latest fund will be invested across 25-30 companies with opening investment cheques of $500K-$1.25 million and reserves per winning company running into $3-5 million.

Blume, which counts notable startups such as Unacademy, Grey Orange, Spinny, Turtlemint, Dunzo, HealthifyMe, Purplle and Railyatri in its portfolio, also saw support from its current limited partners or LPs as well as new institutional investors from global markets for Fund III.

Till date, Blume has invested in over 100 startups across categories and maintains a 60:40 ratio while investing in domestic and global startups. Led by Sanjay Nath and Karthik Reddy, Blume has also made exits from Mettl, NowFloats, Threadsol and Minjar. 

With Fund III, Blume continues to strengthen its global investment partnerships. Besides being a member of Draper Venture Network (DVN) and Arka Venture Labs, Blume has also set up an early stage-focused R&D investment program 'BUDHA' with its Japanese strategic partner UTEC.

Over the last couple of years, early-stage investment has become overcrowded with the presence of blue-chip VCs including Accel India, SAIF Partners, DSG Consumer Partners, 3one4 Capital, India Quotient, Stellaris, Orios, Venture Highway and Sequoia’s latest venture, Surge. 

Media reports also suggested that Sequoia is planning a separate fund worth $200 million for early-stage startups.

Apart from mainstream VC funds, the entry of Investopad’s co-founders led Good Capital and Parampara Capital’s co-founders led Inflexor Technology Fund has made the competition stiff for VCs focusing on startups in the early stage.