Why we invested in Lumio

Lumio has raised their Series A of $12M led by us at Blume Ventures (Fund V). 

We’re backing Raghu Reddy and Kailash Sankaranarayan as they build India’s next big consumer electronics brand.

India has lived with sub-optimal TV and screen-based experiences for a long time. Remotes lag, apps take time to open, and the home screen is slow to scroll. We have just got used to it.

Raghu and Kailash wanted to change that. Lumio began with high-end smart TVs and home entertainment, one of the largest consumer categories in India and also one where the products have improved very little. Their approach is the flagship killer playbook applied to TVs and projectors: a better display and faster performance than the incumbents, at great value. Their customer is the India1 buyer who spends three or four hours on YouTube reviews and Reddit threads before spending ₹30,000 to ₹50,000 on a TV.

Lumio is taking on a huge market

The market is big. Indian TV sales are about ₹60,000 crore a year, around ₹12,000 crore of that is online, and the market is growing steadily. The competition has also changed. OnePlus and Realme have exited, Xiaomi has pulled back, and online market share has been reshuffled. That leaves room at the mid-premium end for a brand built specifically for India. Projectors are an even earlier market: about 1% of Indian homes have one, compared with 15 – 20% in the US and China. This, along with the rise of 2 or 3 TV households, means that the market will keep expanding.

The first year

Lumio grew quickly. In its first year of operations, the company:

• crossed roughly ₹60 crore in net revenue
• built a TV and projector portfolio that is CM2-positive, with tight working capital
• reached #5 in Amazon TV brand searches within four months
• reached #1 in projector searches within a month of launching projectors, and is now the best-selling projector brand on Amazon

Lumio has deliberately priced itself above the mass market and below the flagships. Its average selling price is about ₹32,500, around 1.6 times the category average. About 64% of buyers are upgrading from established brands such as Sony, Samsung, LG and Xiaomi. More than 40% use iPhones, which is an indicator of affluence. Those customers are recommending Lumio to friends and family.

TLDR: software people use

Most TV brands have historically put very little effort into software, so the screen becomes a launcher for other companies’ apps, which don’t work very well. So Lumio built TLDR, its own layer on top of Android and Google TV. It fixes content fatigue, the time people spend jumping between apps without finding anything to watch.

TLDR started with sports. Live matches, scores, highlights and analysis all have one interface, and that’s now expanding into a single view for finding movies and shows across platforms.

The early engagement numbers convinced us of its value. About half of Lumio TV buyers use TLDR every month. Half of those use it every week, often several times a day. That level of use is rare for a TV brand, and it means Lumio is building a platform we will use everyday, not just selling us a screen.

Founders who have done this before

Raghu Reddy was Chief Business Officer at Xiaomi India, where he helped build their TV business into a franchise worth several thousand crore. He knows open-cell sourcing, contract manufacturing, pricing cycles, how Amazon and Flipkart work, and how the Indian buyers think about a ₹30,000 – 50,000 purchase. This is hard-earned knowledge and experience that few people possess.

Kailash Sankaranarayan has run categories at Flipkart, and led marketing at TI Cycles and HUL. His strengths are consumer insight, NPS, pricing ladders, and positioning. Raghu has built this kind of business before, and Kailash knows how to get Indian consumers to choose and stay with a brand. This is the kind of co-founder partnership that sets up great companies.

Why we led the investment

Any one of these advantages could be copied: hardware specs, software people use every week, quick traction, and a lead in a category that is still forming. But being able to do all of them at once is very rare, especially with a team that is super-careful about product quality and execution.

Lumio is building an India-first consumer electronics brand that competes on performance. The TVs and projectors are superhits, and speakers are on their way. At Blume, we’re excited to partner with Raghu, Kailash and the Lumio team as they work to become the default brand for the India1 living room. Lumio has been switched on, and we at Blume are on board.