Blume Ventures

Check the fit first

• Blume says it backs founders at a very early stage, helping them reach product-market fit and the first point of scale, across B2C and B2B businesses. - Its portfolio spans consumer, SaaS, fintech, healthcare, agritech, climate, deep tech and space; look at the startups page for companies near yours. - This is venture equity, not a grant. ## How to reach them

• Blume says to read the questions-and-answers section on the blume.vc home page first, then write in cold or go through a trusted mutual friend. - Do not send pitches to the other inboxes on its contact page, and do not use the form for investors in its funds to pitch. - No pitch inbox or application form was readable on the pages we checked; follow the route on the home page. ## Programmes

• Velocity, PropelX and BluSwan are for founders Blume already backs. - Lead Tribe for women founders showed its latest cohort as closed.

Blume Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Mumbai. Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath founded it in 2010 to reimagine startup financing for India, aiming to move with the speed of an angel investor while working as an institutional fund. ## Who it backs

Blume says it partners with founders at a very early stage, helping them reach product-market fit and the first point of scale, and then stays invested for anywhere from eight to ten years. Its funds have moved from pre-seed to seed and, in later funds, to seed and pre-Series A, and it is investing from Fund IV, which began in 2021. Its portfolio page filters by sectors that include AgriTech, AI and ML, ClimateTech, DeepTech, EdTech, EV and Mobility, FinTech, Healthcare, Horizontal SaaS and SpaceTech, and both B2B and B2C businesses. Named portfolio companies include Unacademy, Slice, Spinny, Classplus, Pixxel and Battery Smart. This is equity investment from a fund, not a grant. ## What founders get beyond capital

Blume describes its offer as capital, counsel and conviction. Portfolio founders get access to its services partners for financial and legal compliance and for recruitment, plus in-house help with growth capital, sales and strategic partnerships and community. It also runs Velocity, a bi-annual bootcamp for its early-stage founders, PropelX for meetings with industry and lending partners, and BluSwan, an invite-only event for meeting institutional investors. Lead Tribe is a cohort-based learning programme for early-stage women founders; its page says applications for Cohort III are closed, so check before relying on it. ## How to reach Blume

Blume's contact page says to read the questions-and-answers section on its home page before writing in cold or approaching the team through a trusted mutual friend. It says those answers explain how the firm works and how to reach it. It also asks that pitches not be sent to the other inboxes listed on the contact page, because the colleagues who run them do not forward pitch mails to the investment team, and it says the form for investors in its funds must not be used for pitching a startup. Blume does not publish a pitch form or an investment inbox on the pages we read. The firm has offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Gandhinagar (GIFT City) and San Francisco; the majority of the investment team is in Bangalore, and Mumbai is the biggest office.