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Indus Valley Annual Report 2024

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BLUMEBLAZING

Backing the next wave of revolutionary founders, from India, for the world.
 * BRAZEN BRAZEN
   BRAZEN BRAZEN
   
   India's largest online learning and test prep platform.

 * BRAVE BRAVE
   BRAVE BRAVE
   
   Ensuring cleaner air for the next generation

 * BOLD BOLD
   BOLD BOLD
   
   Expanding access to credit for young, rising India.

 * BRAZEN BRAZEN
   BRAZEN BRAZEN
   
   India's largest online learning and test prep platform.

 * BRAVE BRAVE
   BRAVE BRAVE
   
   Ensuring cleaner air for the next generation

 * BOLD BOLD
   BOLD BOLD
   
   Expanding access to credit for young, rising India.

 * BLAZING BLAZING
   BLAZING BLAZING
   
   Expanding access to beauty and wellness products, for young, aspiring India.

 * BRILLIANT BRILLIANT
   BRILLIANT BRILLIANT
   
   Cutting edge AI software and smart robots enabling state of the art warehouse
   automation.

 * BOUNDLESS BOUNDLESS
   BOUNDLESS BOUNDLESS
   
   Grocery delivery and more, delivered via the nearest delivery partner.

 * BLAZING BLAZING
   BLAZING BLAZING
   
   Expanding access to beauty and wellness products, for young, aspiring India.

 * BRILLIANT BRILLIANT
   BRILLIANT BRILLIANT
   
   Cutting edge AI software and smart robots enabling state of the art warehouse
   automation.

 * BOUNDLESS BOUNDLESS
   BOUNDLESS BOUNDLESS
   
   Grocery delivery and more, delivered via the nearest delivery partner.


BOLD. BRAVE. BRILLIANT. BRAZEN.

The founders we back are all this, and more. They are unreasonable, they are
crazy ambitious, obsessed with solving hard, gnarly problems. Problems whose
solutions transform lives and impact society. And, it takes a revolutionary
founder, and a transformational company to solve these problems, and effect
change.

We back these transformational companies, and their revolutionary founders
early, and remain lifelong partners.

About Us
Sucharita Mukherjee
KALEIDOFIN

> Blume’s team really understands the unique challenges of early stage
> companies. This helps immensely in cutting out the noise and taking the right
> strategic decisions for the firm.


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Suchita Salwan
LBB (acq by Nykaa)

> The Blume team — not just the partners — treats their founders as equals.
> They’re very approachable, open-minded, and collaborative in their approach.


PITCH US

The best way to reach out to us is to be introduced through a Blume portfolio
founder who knows you personally and can vouch for you! Or you can come through
a mutual contact. If you don’t know anyone who can introduce you to Blume, then
do reach out to us directly. Before you write in cold, or reach out to us via a
trusted mutual friend, feel free to read these FAQs below. They will tell you
about how we work and think, as well as how to reach us.

Meet the team

HOW DOES BLUME EVALUATE EARLY STAGE STARTUPS?

In our framework, we look at three criteria to evaluate startups – size of
market or opportunity, team quality and finally, investability or probability of
the next round of capital. Our approximate weightage for Opportunity : Team :
Investability is 40 : 40 : 20. Let us double click on these three criteria.

Market size or opportunity: Pick too small a market and even the best team can’t
build a large scalable business. The best founders know how to reshape a market
opportunity and build solutions to fit the largest of the market opportunities.
That said, one has to begin with the aggregate opportunity being very large. For
example, are Ola and Uber a ride hailing app or a large scale urban
transportation business? The market size expands 5-10x when the latter is
applied.  At Blume, we try to find a portfolio balance between founders who can
chase a large market opportunity domestically or build a tech-led differentiated
product for global markets (which increase

Founding teams: These are the most important variables for us or even most VCs
at our stage. In every decision, once the other two factors are seen as a go,
the clincher element in a yes/no decision boils down to the founding team –
their expertise in solving for this space, as well as the integrity, mission,
passion and persistence that one can gauge at this early stage of business.

Investability or probability of next rounds of capital: The reality of how the
later stage funding market is shaped to take risky bets in the ecosystem is
important to consider while funding, especially in young and concentrated
ecosystems like India, and that’s why we attribute 20% weightage to this element
in India. We force ourselves to evaluate how much capital may be required to
build to exitable scale and how challenging it is to raise that capital. As the
funding ecosystem matures, we may shrink weightage of this in the future. Great
founders overcome all of this but if we can select such that we have better odds
at the starting point, why not?

The above framework helps us shortlist but finally, it is a (increasingly
improving) trained gut call that ends up building out the portfolio.

WHAT IS BLUME'S INVESTMENT CRITERIA?

Blume prefers ventures that have achieved some degree of customer validation,
where the product is already launched in market and we are getting customer
signups and feedback. We do make exceptions on the above for seasoned operators
and second-time founders, but typically with first-time founders, we do not do
idea stage or pre-MVP investments.

If you are a B2B startup or an ecommerce / consumer transaction play, an
annualised revenue rate (or revenues) of $375k (₹3cr) and above is a good
milestone to reach out to us.

If you are a marketplace startup, then reach out to us when you are nearing or
have crossed a monthly GMV of ₹50 lacs a month.

If you are a consumer app that isn't monetising yet, then ping us when you near
or cross MAUs of 25k / DAUs of 5k.

The above are broad guidelines, and not hard rules. We do make exceptions. If in
doubt, reach out!

HOW MUCH DOES BLUME INVEST?

We are a seed / pre-Series A fund. While we are fairly flexible on the
investment quantum, typically we have seen our investments range across from
$1.5 to $3m (₹12 to 24 crs). We do optimise however for a stake of anywhere from
12 to 20%.  These stake requirements reflect the depth and extent of support we
provide to the startup – from fundraising and hiring to business development
etc. We also anticipate the rounds of dilution that every successful startup
will undergo, and the desired holding that we need to hold at the point of exit.

DOES BLUME INVEST IN INTERNATIONAL STARTUPS?

We invest in startups that are Indian at heart or origin, but are willing to
conquer the world market if needed to build scale. About a third of our
portfolio is of this nature – taking Indian engineering skills to build products
for global markets. Unfortunately, We DO NOT invest in startups that are
international and have NO strong Indian connection / founders. We are also
strong believers that to invest as a ‘generalist tech VC’ as we are, we need to
be more and more focussed on a particular geography. We need to see as much of
the available annual pipeline to know that we’ve truly picked 10 great founders
/ startups to invest in. We have no such advantage when we are looking outside
the country; which is why we stay away from the temptation of looking at
pipeline from international markets.

WHAT KIND OF SECTORS DOES BLUME INVEST IN?

With our new Fund, our fourth since inception, we are looking to invest about
60-65% of the new fund in domestic-heavy sectors such as healthcare, financial
services, commerce and brands, jobs and education, and digital media and gaming.
The other 35-40% of the fund will focus on SaaS, and DeepTech (including
CleanTech, manufacturing, blockchain) companies, typically in B2B, that can
innovate and engineer with local talent pools, and yet scale globally.

DOES BLUME HAVE A PREFERENCE BETWEEN B2B AND B2C?

We like both. India is a consumer market that is poised to explode, as people
move to the digital economy to spend an increasingly larger share of their
wallet’s purchasing power. That makes it attractive to build a strong consumer
proposition in India. And thus our B2C portfolio. We are also now very good at
taking our science and engineering skills in software and other areas, and
building commercial applications at scale, often for the global market. These
constitute the majority of B2B ideas in our portfolio and we like this space a
lot.

WHERE DO I SEND MY PITCH? HOW DO I REACH OUT TO BLUME?

We get anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 ideas pitched to us annually, across the
team, across all formats. This includes referrals, cold mails, DMs on social
channels etc. We have given up counting :)

We invest in about 10-12 of these per year. As Blume has grown, we've looked at
the empirical data and discovered that the vast majority of our investments were
referrals from our contacts in the ecosystem. You can count the exceptions to
this rule with one hand in every cycle, and still have a few fingers to spare!
These referrals come from our own founders we have backed, other founders who
know that we will do right by their angel investments and our extensive set of
friends, investors and well wishers in the ecosystem. The exceptions, while not
impossible, are indeed rare.

Ceteris paribus (all things considered), you are better off reaching us through
a trusted common friend. In a highly networked startup ecosystem, it is not that
hard to reach us through the strongest possible mutual connection. But if that
is not possible, do reach out to us cold. Your email will certainly be read,
even if it is not always responded to. We have ensured that our internal systems
catch every pitch - cold or warm or hot. 

When writing in cold, a considered and researched mail (much like a quality
college application) is the only way to attempt such a reach out. Please check
out the team page, find the best person in the Investment team who has invested
in and / or covers the sector you're building in. Do check out their social
profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter) to access their contact info. Our email ids are not
hard to guess as well! Preferably write to one person at a time, in the firm.

The above are good principles for you irrespective of which firm you approach /
pitch to. Nothing works better than a warm, referred introduction - it always
gets the rightful attention. 

Please note that we have done away with a pitch form, or a common email id. From
our experience, we found that the volume of inbound traffic was indeed high, but
not always relevant, and thus almost impossible to assign a resource to just
monitor these inbound gates.

Raghunandan G
Taxiforsure | Zolve

> Blume treats its companies as ‘customers’ and not part of a ‘portfolio’, and
> are one of the friendliest VCs who offer more than just financial help.


 * Statutory Information:
 * Blume Venture Advisors Private Limited
 * Unit 2/1A, Jetha Compound, Opp. Nirmal Park, Byculla East, Mumbai City,
   Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, 400027
 * CIN/LLPIN : U74990MH2010PTC208888
 * Telephone Number : 022-43471659/43470370
 * Email : contact@blume.vc

Indus Valley Annual Report 2024
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