Field Notes

“Quick Commerce Handbook: Field Notes from the Frontlines,” offers a comprehensive guide to achieving sustainable growth in the quick commerce sector. It features battle-tested insights from three experienced founders: Prince (Plush), Tushar (Perfora), and Sri (Gobblecube), who…

The clock was ticking at Dreamforce 2015 as Prakhar Jain, head of Sales at Indian SaaS startup WhatFix, watched another potential customer approach their modest booth. While WhatFix is valued at over $900 million today, in 2015, it was a fledgling startup, and attending…

In the Indian consumer brand landscape, there’s often a tension between rapid growth and financial discipline. While many startups choose the high-burn path to scale, some companies have made the interesting choice to prioritize capital efficiency alongside growth.…

Welcome to part two of our Vertical SaaS Series. Here’s where we’re at: Part 1: 12 key learnings on how to build a successful vertical SaaS company (

Everyone in the startup ecosystem understands the basics: ESOPs are crucial for attracting talent, aligning incentives, and creating a wider distribution of wealth. But it’s the thorny, nuanced questions that keep surfacing in the founder WhatsApp groups and…

Originally shared as a part of the quarterly update with our Limited Partners, this analysis of exit patterns in the Indian startup ecosystem garnered significant interest and prompted thoughtful discussions in our networks. As a result, we decided to make our take…

Rahul Sasi, CEO of CloudSEK, a cybersecurity startup, is a trained magician. He learned a golden rule early in life: You must make the audience like you before showing a magic trick. Skilled illusionists spend considerable effort in building rapport…

Imagine you’re pitching your cyber security software to a large Indian bank. You’ve prepared a detailed ROI analysis, cost-saving calculations, and competitive landscape. But the CIO barely glances at it. Instead, she asks about your educational background,…

Did you know that one of the earliest success stories of an Account-Based Marketing motion, or ABM motion, was so successful that it ended up in an antitrust lawsuit? In 1884, John Henry Patterson acquired a small cash register company in Dayton,…

Before joining the investment team at Blume Ventures, I worked on starting various platforms and brands. Some of these platforms/​brands have scaled up to become multi-million-dollar monthly revenue businesses. But how do you find that big idea and ensure it reaches your ideal…

“Fundraise announcement is a once-in-two-year opportunity to get all eyes on you. You’ll do other announcements as well, but they will not get the same interest as a funding announcement. So, why would you not put in every effort to get maximum attention and grab as…

For those of us who are in the business of observing the Indian consumer, Blume’s Indus Valley Report is the perfect starting point. The report splits the Indian consumer into three distinct sets — India 1, 2, and 3. The India 1 consumer set is the top ~120M consumers…

Reflections on Total Addressable Market (TAM); why TAM doesn’t matter but thinking about it matters. If you are a founder and get a pass from a VC who cites low TAM (Total Addressable Market) as a reason for passing, then rest assured that in nine out of ten…

You have an idea and a prototype or a minimum viable product. Now, you want to talk to customers to get them to use or buy your product. What do you do next? Many founders, especially technical ones, get stuck at this stage. This…

LTV/CAC is one of the most important metrics tracked by consumer tech companies. Increasing a user’s Lifetime Value (LTV) and reducing their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) improves a platform’s unit economics. I’ve already written about driving revenue through performance and…

“Sell me this pen.” In the final scene of The Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort walks around a large conference room, asking everyone to sell him a pen. The attendees look puzzled and mumble…

As a consumer-tech investor at Blume Ventures, I often speak to founders who find it difficult to measure the performance of influencer videos effectively. While influencer marketing is a hard-to-measure channel, it is also increasingly becoming more important. Influencers…

Selling SaaS in India requires a nuanced understanding of local market dynamics, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face interactions over digital communications, leveraging personal networks for introductions, and aligning product offerings with the specific needs and…

“Founders often overlook IPO as a marketing campaign and don’t spend enough time with the marketing function, which is a missed opportunity. You have to convince investors of all sizes — HNIs, institutional, as well as retail to invest, and you are competing with multiple…