Blume Day Curtain Call: What Made Our 11th Year Bash A Hit

This year’s BlumeDay was the most celebrated event in almost two years. Don’t take our word for it. Check #BlumeDay2022 on Twitter and see the buzz for yourself. 

We saw over 450+ people come together for our 11th birthday celebrations. The energy was the highest we have ever seen on a BlumeDay, and conversations wouldn’t stop to catch a breath.

We kicked off the event with the LP AGM panel steered by Ashish Fafadia and Alok Mehta. Sarita Raichura hosted a stellar panel of family investing. 

Blume’s signature speed-investing event, BluSwan, saw 168 participants get into heady pitching sessions.

Here’s a tiny sample of what we overheard in the BluSwan chamber:

“Mind-blowing”

“How do you guys pull this off?”

“Amazing value for my time”

The Mainstage event commenced with Karthik Reddy introducing Blume’s brand new identity. As Blume Ventures moves into the next decade of its existence, we adopted a new avatar that reflects our rising ambitions and the determined growth of our portfolio companies. 

To learn more about the story behind our brand design, head over to this link.

We also had a set of panels speaking to a packed room. We started with the grand reveal of the Indus Valley Report. The ~100 slide deck is the blood and toil of Sajith Pai and Amal Vats from the investment team. We took stock of the Indus Valley (desi Silicon Valley) through three lenses – contradictions, data, and ideas.

Some nuggets from the report to let you know what to expect:

• India has the highest female number of pilots, but a declining female labour participation rate.
• We have an English tax! Better command over the Queen’s language, higher the salary.
• We may be gushing over crypto, but the industry is increasingly moving to Dubai.

Here’s the link to the entire report: https://t.co/kKf8uJkS9s

For the second panel, Arpan Seth of Bain & Company sat down with Mukul Rustagi of ClassPlus and Shivakumar Ganesan of Exotel to talk about the homecoming of SaaS. Companies are warming up to building for the domestic market as SaaS adoption grows and more business functions get digitised. Here’s an amusing instance from the talk: In this panel, Rustagi mentions how his product saw fewer sales when they priced it lower, but retention increased when they priced it higher.

Kunal Bajaj, Head – Capital Networks at Blume, spoke about how far we have come. You can call it our 10-year report card, and we outperformed on every front.

Comedian and actor Rohan Joshi spoke about how he is using biomarkers to optimize his diet and exercise routines. He was joined by Mohit Kumar and Kartikeya Shekhar of Ultrahuman and sports science expert Heath Matthews who talked about the importance of nutrition and sleep for better health. 

Arpit Agarwal and Venkatesh Modi from Blume spoke about why they are bullish on the EV space, the headwinds facing the industry, and the possible solutions in the making. We also got a glimpse into the lives of people who bettered their circumstances post EV adoption.

For this panel, the stars came down to earth. Nikkhil Advani of the Rocket Boys fame sat down with Awais Ahmed of Pixxel to discuss the high-interest sector of space technology. Some trivia: Ahmed was a part of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop SpaceX competition, and he credits the event for fueling his interest in all things space. 

For our surprise panel (even the Blume team was kept in the dark for this one!) Karthik Reddy sat down with Niraj Singh of Spinny and Akanksha Hazari of LoveLocal to discuss what makes an entrepreneur’s journey special. Fun fact: Niraj is a third time entrepreneur, and is now building the second most valued unicorn in our portfolio. Another fun fact: The only time Karthik went to a meeting with termsheet ready is when he met Akanksha at their one-room Dadar office. Watch the talk for more.

It’s a wrap! But we hope to come back with twice as much energy and even better stories next year. We can’t wait to see what the coming year brings.