Venture Capital firm Blume Ventures recently announced the closure of its Fund III at $102mn. The firm’s third fund has been raised from anchor investors based in India, Japan, the US, and Asia. The fund also raised amounts from existing limited partners, who have earlier invested in previous funds.
According to a company press release, Blume Ventures’ Fund III will back 25 to 30 early-stage startups that are focusing on the two distinct opportunity sets that India offers. These two include “opportunities that leverage the mobile-led explosion of the Indian digital-first economy, and Indian engineering and science translated to global market opportunities.”
The company has also notified that the opening cheque will range between $500k to $1.25mn and up to $3mn to $5mn would be invested per winning company.
With opening investment cheques of $500K-$1.25M, and reserves per winning company running into $3-5 million, Blume is now signaling larger ownership needs, and longer & deeper commitment to winners from the portfolio,” the company noted.
Blume Ventures had announced the first close of Fund III at $45 Mn in October 2018. So far, the company has used the capital to invest in over 10 startups. These include healthcare company HealthAssure, consumer companies Taaraka and Stage3, agritech startups Jai Kisan, TartanSense, Procol, and edtech startups Classplus, Tapchief and LeverageEdu.
Last week, Blume Ventures invested $2.5 Mn in Pre-Series A round of Delhi-NCR based ed-tech startup Classplus, along with Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program. Angel investors such as Cred’s founder Kunal Shah, general manager of Xiaomi Indonesia Alvin Tse, and partner at Locus Ventures Eric Kwan had also participated in the round.
“This fund has also allowed Blume to expand its ambition and presence with offices in Delhi and Bangalore over the last 18 months which have rapidly scaled to teams of 5 members each,” the company said.
According to Blume, it has become the first homegrown fund to raise a third fund and also over $100 million in a single fund. Meanwhile, media reports also suggested that Sequoia is planning a separate fund worth $200 million for early-stage startups.
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