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“There were times when we didn’t have money for payroll. I staggered salaries. We operated like this for almost a year during the 2018 – 19 period,” recalls Avlesh Singh, co-founder and CEO of WebEngage. When life handed Avlesh…

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…

Imagine being a mother of two young kids, taking a bus from Bengaluru to Chennai, one of the busiest inter-state routes in India. The seats are smelly. There’s an old film playing on a ragtag TV. The brakes barely work. Every turn makes you a little…

“I always wondered, ​‘Who copies someone else’s makeup or look?’ Then I spoke to 18-year-old Gudiya (name changed) from Calcutta. This call opened my eyes. She said women over 25 usually go to a beauty parlor for family…

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…

“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…

We released the first draft of our opinions on the circular economy in May 2023. Almost a year later, we identified an…

Imagine a startup with millions of dollars in ARR. Now, make a hard pivot because you are convinced the future is starkly different from what you see today. Give up almost all revenue. Rebuild the business brick by brick to tens…

Today, we are proud to announce that we are co-leading a $5.5M seed round in Sifthub — an AI SaaS startup founded by Manisha Raisinghani — which aims to transform how sales and pre-sales teams discover knowledge and generate responses.

Shubham cofounded Affinity along with his Stanford collegemate (and roommate), Ray Zhou, in ​‘15 when they were still students. Since then they have built it into a ​‘late eight figures’ ($ m) revenue business in the crowded CRM category.

Ranjeet is one of the more interesting figures in Indian startup twitter. I have, for long, enjoyed his tweets and thoughts on the challenges and learnings from building a content platform in India, Pratilipi; one that paved the way for a wave of vernacular language apps to…

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…

Vinay Hiremath is the first tech leader I have had a chance to interview through all these episodes of PMF Convo. Vinay and I were connected by Jai Relan, an impressive young builder / hustler who is presently an Associate at The Council Fund.