Library
Dec 2016
A year's Musings, Learnings, and a Call to Arms for 2017
Wow, and another year has flown by ! We’re all hopefully a bit wiser and grayer after the ebbs and flows of 2016, and further hardened after witnessing the year’s notable events globally and at home. So, some musings and personal learnings as we close out…
Oct 2016
Trust 2.O - Demystifying the Blockchain
Banks, remittance giants, almost all financial institutions seem to be intrigued by the growing…
Sep 2016
Money without boundaries
The concept of money is central to our civilization. Barring a few people who can live far from the attachments of physical world, everyone else interacts with money on an everyday basis, usually several times in a day. It drives a large part of human behaviour – our…- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
The Sprint and the Marathon
It’s only been one and a half years into Fund II, but the stark realities between the exuberance of 2015 to the rationalization of 2016 inspired me to pen down some thoughts on my Fund II learnings. Disclaimer: It’s a 7 min read.. “A traveller came…
Aug 2016
How to save 3M lives per year?
Dr Charit is a curious cardiologist. While most others would be happy with the fact that there are too…- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
- Topics
- #Technology
- #Entrepreneurship
Angels in our midst
I write this piece as an angel-turned-institutional VC . After our respective careers in industry and working with startups, both Karthik and I got our first taste as early Mumbai Angels members. This post is aimed at founders looking for seed capital from the…Olympians and Entrepreneurs - Bruise, Bounce back, Bolt
#Random tweet ” The Olympics are a great excuse to be glued to the TV and watch athlete after athlete battle their sport out, working harder in those 14 days than most of us will likely in our *entire* lives ” As the 2016 Rio Olympics draw to…[Olympic DayDreams] Don’t write off the Startup Anthony Ervins!
Somewhere in an old khakhi bag in my parents’ Chennai home, there is a notebook that has a log of every (yeah, every!) event in the 1984 Olympics and the medalists. That’s how stats obsessed and sports obsessed I was to be between the ages of 10 and 17, possibly like some…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
- Topics
- #portfolio
Innovating for India, Going Native
Let me begin by congratulating Girish and his team @Freshdesk, which won the ET Award for Top Startup of the Year, announced just today. Freshdesk is unarguably one of the best known high-growth, built-for-global-markets enterprise B2B stories to have emerged from…
Jul 2016
How we started Blume Talent Unit: Part 2 – The Present and the Future
[This is a second and concluding part of our series on our experiments with hiring. The first part was published- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
Jun 2016
How we started Blume Talent Unit: Part 1 - Experiments and Learning
The leading thought in Venture Capital industry globally is that ‘Venture Capital is a services buinsess’. Blume is one of the few venture capital firms in the country that take pride to have built a platform of services (called ’- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
May 2016
dunzo! - "all things local"
Chapter 5b, The Portfolio Chronicles In this recent Economist article, much has been foretold about AI being the…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
Apr 2016
The Entrepreneur-VC
There is ample coverage around Entrepreneurs-turned-VCs. For good reason – indeed, entrepreneurial and operations skills are desirable ingredients for a VC’s skill set. Examples abound, especially in the valley – Reid Hoffman (founder of Linkedin, now a partner @…- Authors
- Sanjay Nath
- Topics
- #Fundraising
Mar 2016
dunzo - task management
Chapter 5a, The Portfolio Chronicles The evolution of online commerce ( and services) which started with JustDial (JD) in 1996 and progressed with Bookmyshow (BMS), Indiaplaza and Makemytrip (MMT) starting in 1998, 1999 and 2000 initially focussed on the…- Sectors
- Artificial Intelligence
- Topics
- #ArtificialIntelligence
Rise of the Resilient Entrepreneur
Circa March 2016, we’ve come to be frequently posed with questions such as: Many of these questions are rhetorical, yet valid. Its good to note though, there have been enough entrepreneurs busy building real businesses from the get go. The…
Feb 2016
SlicePay - Student Lending
Chapter 4, The Portfolio Chronicles (originally, this post appeared as “Buddy”, prior to the rebranding to “SlicePay” Its a spiral in motion — with the advent of eCommerce and more rapid channels to reach a…The Force Awakens [Part 2]
[This is Part 2 of a two part series reflecting on a slice of 2015 and celebrating the beginnings of a new chapter at Blume, as we turn 5 this month]- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
The Force Awakens [Part 1]
[This is a two part series reflecting on a slice of 2015 and celebrating the beginnings of a new chapter at Blume, as we turn 5 this month] 2015 will be etched in my memory. While all spatial and metaphysical possibilities and explanations of human existence…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
Turtlemint - Insurance redefined
Chapter 3, The Portfolio Chronicles Insurance has always been a opaque and complex necessity. Its not surprising then that only 3.9% of Indians are insured, despite the “necessity” element. With an unprecedented increase in…Belong!
Chapter 1, The Portfolio Chronicles I knew Vijay was leaving Exotel. I also knew @webaficionado from Twitter, not in person back then, and that he had interned at a couple of Blume startups when he was still at BITS Pilani. And now, they were plotting…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
- Topics
- #Hiring