Library
Nov 2019
The Hunt For India’s Deep-Tech Unicorn: Blume Ventures Battles The Odds
VC investor Blume Ventures is seeding a deep-tech ecosystem in India, funding a bevy of startups. It’s nurturing companies and helping them tap overseas markets and bring in global investors. Blume’s founders believe that a deep-tech unicorn in India may not be far away.…- Sectors
- DeepTech
- Topics
- #Fundraising
- #investing
Direct Listings, Raising The Bar And Centurion Founders (Let’s Aim For 100M ARR, Not Valuation)
The Founder’s lens Moving beyond the traditional avenues of banker-driven IPOs, today’s leading unicorns are taking an alternative that has now become an upward trend. Reputed venture capitalists such as Benchmark’s Bill Gurley and Sequoia’s Sir…- Authors
- Sanjay Nath
- Topics
- #Innovation
- #IPO
- #Entrepreneurship
Oct 2019
PART III Epilogue
A couple exchanging marriage vows are almost always thinking – “This is it! It’s for a lifetime!” Alas! It doesn’t work out sometimes. But the vows indicate that it was at least the hope. And many marriages, despite the odds, do last a lifetime. How often can one say that…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
PART II: Keep Calm And Pick A ‘Listable-Founder’ Mindset
The (Publicly) Listed Venture-backed Tech Company is Dead! Softbank and similar mega-sized investors are cited too often nowadays as a way to sustain staying private for longer than needed. Long live the Public listing of the Venture-backed Tech Company! I don’t…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
- Topics
- #Innovation
- #IPO
PART I: Keep Calm And Go All The Way To The IPO Bell (At Least In Your Head)
Every year, for the past 8 years, I have got the same question a few minutes into every LP meeting (LPs or Limited Partners are the financial investors who give funds such as Blume the capital to invest into startups). “Where are the exits?” “Why aren’t there…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
- Topics
- #Innovation
- #IPO
Sep 2019
(TL;DR) Keep Calm And Take The Road Less Travelled (A Three-Part Essay)
The Indian VC-supported startup world doesn’t seem to have come to terms with an important eventuality – Venture cycle completions means companies going public and creating monstrously large public companies that are eventually the source of smaller acquisitions and exits.…- Authors
- Karthik Reddy
- Topics
- #Innovation
Aug 2019
Highlights From Our Recent Chai & Chatter On ‘Future Of Work’
Why do companies exist? Why is the gig economy growing? What will the firm of the future look like? These were some of the questions with which we kickstarted Blume’s 7th Chai & Chatter on the theme of ‘Future of Work’. Chai & Chatter, or C&C as it is commonly…
Jul 2019
Why We Invested in Procol
This is Asia’s largest Jeera (cumin seed) market at Unjha, Gujarat. Purchases happen via handshakes, phone calls and records are kept on paper chits. © Gaurav Baheti. The bread that you ordered online from Grofers or Milkbasket, was in turn ordered by them, from…- Authors
- Sajith Pai
- Topics
- #SupplyChain
- #Agricommodity
Thoughts On The Future Of Work – Part 1
Future of Work is a big interest area for Blume. We have bet big on this space with investments in Squad,- Sectors
- HRTech
- Authors
- Sajith Pai
- Topics
- #gigeconomy
- #bluecollar
- #whitecollar
Thoughts On The Future Of Work – Part 2
This is the second in a three-part series exploring how Blume thinks about the Future of Work. In the first, I shared the key drivers of the transformation of work underway, including the twin trends – emergence of a task or gig-based economy, as well as the decline of…- Sectors
- HRTech
- Authors
- Sajith Pai
- Topics
- #gigeconomy
- #bluecollar
- #whitecollar
Chronicling NewSpace Part 2: Role Of US Space Policy
In the first post of this series, we discussed the space race and how the NewSpace began. In this part, we discuss the role of US government policy in…- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
- Topics
- #NewSpace
#ReversePitch: How Is Blume Thinking About Drones?
At Blume, we have always been passionate about technology, especially which enables non-linear opportunities (ex: UiPath enables Robotic Process Automation). Businesses that enable multiple use-cases in the coming 10 – 15 years, some of which might even be unconceivable today,…- Sectors
- DeepTech
- Topics
- #Investing
- #Technology
Building A ‘Founder-First’ Ecosystem
After having more than 130+ applications on our ‘Ex Founders Initiative’ forum, I was vividly reminded of Jay Conrad Levinson’s revolutionary book ‘Guerrilla Marketing’; Where guerrilla actually means ‘improvising’ your product from the tools you already possess. It meant to…- Authors
- Sanam Rawal
- Topics
- #Founderfirst
- #Culture
- #metamorph
Chronicling NewSpace Part 1: Emergence Of SpaceX
We have been receiving quite a few proposals over last 9 – 12 months. Shubham and I took on figuring what should be our thesis in NewSpace in India. While we are figuring our way…- Authors
- Arpit Agarwal
- Topics
- #NewSpace
May 2019
How Prashant Singh Of PayTM Thinks About Product Management
A packed house at the 2nd Blume Product Meetup, at LBB’s office in Delhi. Every month as part of our community initiatives, Blume hosts meetups across Bangalore and NCR for tech, product and marketing leaders across our portfolio companies to meet, interact and learn…- Authors
- Sajith Pai
- Topics
- #ProductManagement
LATAM Learnings
Latin America (or ‘LatAm’ for short) is an interesting place for venture capitalists and in fact, has many similarities with India: a large middle class breaking out of the low-income category, rising prosperity + urbanization, a growing population of millennials, and a…- Authors
- Sanjay Nath
- Topics
- #GTM
Decoding ESOPs: Legal Framework, Tax Implications And Compliances
In India, over the last 2 decades, Employee Stock Options (“ESOP”) has become one of the most important components of compensation structures, especially in the start-ups which usually don’t have the money power to attract good talent. Let’s say, a start-up company ABC Pvt.…- Authors
- Varun Rajda
- Topics
- #ESOP
Putting The ‘Ed’ Back In EdTech
Every month, Blume Ventures’s Delhi office hosts an event called Chai & Chatter. We bring together investors, entrepreneurs, founders, hustlers and dreamers and engage them in an honest conversation about what we can do better. It allows us to embody what Blume has always…- Sectors
- EdTech
- Authors
- Sajith Pai
- Topics
- #Chai&Chatter
- #FiresideChat
Apr 2019
[Chai & Chatter]: ‘Build Better: Diversity And Its Challenges’
When Blume Ventures kicked off Chai and Chatter in late 2018, we had a simple goal. We wanted to have the conversations the startup ecosystem usually doesn’t. In a space hallmarked by an oversized emphasis on efficiency and a near-chronic paucity of time, we wanted to create…- Topics
- #Chai&Chatter
- #FiresideChat
- #diversity
- #Culture
Deliver Traditional Services Full Stack (Or Don’t Bother)
Over the last few years, to be or not to be ‘full stack’ has become a key business decision. The market leaders in all domains – Swiggy, Zomato, Oyo, Byju’s etc., are seeding their version of full stack by expanding vertically. The impact of this trend on early to medium…- Topics
- #Innovation
- #PMF