The Orbits, They’re a Shiftin’ | Blume Day 2026

Electrons make a quantum leap to shift from one orbit to another. They need a specific burst of energy. Any less than the required specific energy quantum, and the electron can’t make the orbit shift. It is dubbed the ​“All or Nothing” rule. Sounds a little like Alex Honnold’s climbing each floor of Taipei 101 in Jan 2026. No ropes, no support, no interim levels, each set of movements taking him one level up. That’s the physics of nature, that’s the nature of physics. 

Going into our offsite late 2025, the Blume team knew that we had transformed into a different fund house, from even our last giant offsite in 2021. Today, we stand atop our 15^th anniversary milestone, taking a moment to pause, reflecting on how far we’ve come in the journey, spinning out of each of our past orbits, every few years. Fund V, when fully raised, will put us close to $900 mill AUM. That’s a little over 10x larger than where we were halfway into this journey, in mid-2018. This 10x shift seems to be the new ambition of Startup India. 

Unlike electrons, startups and venture capital are not dictated by pure physics. There’s lots of biology, chemistry and math thrown in — people, customer love, and money. The combobulation of these many sciences are the quantums of energy needed for startup Orbit shifts. 

When we began this venture, most folks in the industry told us that a $100 mill startup exit is rare and would be a proud outcome for any fund. We modelled our 100cr first fund to that realism and it served us well. Today, if one can’t imagine a founder and a market opportunity that doesn’t smell, look and feel like a $1 billion outcome, then the Investment Committee asks ​“why bother”? That’s a crazy task for an entrepreneur. But that’s the nature of Venture Capital today as an industry.

And then we have the first batch of companies that have listed not only at $1 billion, but at $10 billion. Some of them now proclaim that their ambition is to build to $100 billion, over the next decade. This orbit shifting has been fascinating to witness. All the subatomic particles have to spin in tandem for this orbit jump. The ambition and capability of founders (the biology), the scale and talent of large teams that can help the founders execute the vision, the proof points of actual scale having been unlocked (the chemistry between teams and their customers), the mind boggling number of digital journeys on the world’s most effective and the cheapest planetary digital infrastructure (the math). It takes a nation to move in an excitable chaotic harmony, much like the bursts of energy that enable electrons to jump orbits. 

The fact that a barely-digital-native audience has unlocked this potential, and that we’ve simply scratched the surface is such an exciting proposition for the next 15 years for us in India, and at Blume. To replicate all the scale and success now in even more fundamental technology shifts and leveraging the speed at which deep tech is growing is once again a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for yet another set of founders and teams on India’s startup stage. 

I heard an anecdote recently. Between the prior budget’s provisioning for a Fund of Funds for sectoral funds that raise the ​“Atma Nirbhar” Index of India’s innovations, and Minister Goyal’s lament of the lack of deep tech startups here, the stage was set for some play action on the Deep Tech side. The proponents seeking an acceleration of this allocation from the Government suggested that a fresh 10,000 cr be made available, with matching leverage from private investors. When the discussion reached the PM, he supposedly demanded more boldness and asked why it can’t be a 100,000 cr fund. After all, it may take even more for Indian tech to be globally competitive. And so, we now have the RDIF, an ambitious 100K Crore initiative for Indian deep tech. This also coincides with the 10 year anniversary of Startup India which was launched on Jan 16, 2016. 

The tee adaptation of the Orbit Shift theme this year is of course a homage to an incomparable Nobel Laureate for Literature. A poet in the disguise of a musician, Bob Dylan, croons ​“The Times, They’re a Changin’”. 

Come gather ​’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

And you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a‑changin’

60 years later, adapting it to our startup land, the last lines of the para could well be:

And you better start leapin’

Or you’ll flop fast like an electron

For the orbits they are a‑shiftin’

Maybe AI is the new quantum leap enabler, maybe its fission and new energy sources. We are in a century that’s allowing humans to think of building structures in space and on other planets. Humankind are becoming orchestrators of what were imagined as futuristic tools and machines. We all nervously await what the next three quarters of the 21^st century will unravel. If you’ve noticed the pattern, the Orbits are stacked on a logarithmic scale and, girl, are they a Shiftin’.