Blume Ventures | Pixr8 News

Blume Ventures Raises $102 mn in final close of Fund III

19Feb By PriyankaNo Comments

BUSINESS

Blume Ventures Raises $102 mn in final close of Fund III

India based early-stage venture capital firm, Blume Ventures announced the final close of Blume Ventures Fund III at USD 102 million (about Rs 730 crore). After a first close in late 2018, the final close was completed in December 2019, a statement said. "We are very proud of our founders and team who have delivered outstanding performance over the last three years, thereby strengthening the Blume brand and track record immensely," Karthik Reddy, co-founder and managing partner at Blume Ventures said. Blume started in 2011 raising an entirely domestic Rs 100 crore fund from HNIs (high net-worth individuals) and subsequently raised a USD 60 million fund (Rs 400 crore) in 2016. It claimed that its the first entirely homegrown fund to raise a third fund and raise over USD 100 million...

Agara Labs raises $2.5 million from Blume Ventures and RTP Global

31May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Agara Labs raises $2.5 million from Blume Ventures and RTP Global

Agara Labs, a startup applying Deep Learning to speech and text to automate customer support, has come out of stealth with pre-Series A funding of $2.5 million from Blume Ventures and RTP Global. The company already counts Silicon Valley bluechip Kleiner Perkins as a seed investor. Agara Labs automates end-to-end customer support operations for even the most complex kinds of queries. It achieves this by training sophisticated Deep Learning models on over 10 million historical customer support queries and other proprietary data sources. The company is currently working with large service providers like AWS and Genesys etc. The company’s flagship product, Sia, is a fully autonomous phone support agent which can directly field calls with customers and handle their problems just the w...

Ed Tech Platform Unacademy Eyeing To Raise $30 Mn

18Jun By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

FUNDING

Ed Tech Platform Unacademy Eyeing To Raise $30 Mn

Unacademy, the popular online learning technology platform is gearing up towards raising a series-C funding round of $25-30 million led by Sequoia Capital along with another clutch of investors. The investment round will bring company's valuation close to around $100 million. Pixr8 had earlier reported Unacademy raising an INR 75 crores Series B round in September 2017 led by Sequoia Capital and Saif Partners along with Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. The Bengaluru-based startup is now India’s largest educational platform, helped over 300,000 students prepare to crack competitive examinations through over 2,400 online lessons, and specialized courses. It has an impressive board of educators on board ranging from influencers like Dr Kiran Bedi to teachers in smaller town...

18Jun By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

FUNDING

Recommerce Platform Cashify raises Funding, pacts with China’s AiHuiShou

Cashify, a Gurugram based online marketplace for used smartphones has partnered with Chinese recommerce firm AiHuiShou as a strategic investor and partner in order to reinforce its international expansion. Though the actual financial details of the deal have not been disclosed by the company, sources have cited that the collaboration is a part of the latest funding round for Cashify. While the partnership will help Cashify leverage AiHuiShiu's technology, it will also help to bring operational efficiencies in its business as the platform is eyeing to expand across international markets like the Middle East and Indonesia by next year. Cashify is backed by Blume Ventures and Shunwei Capital and works with many offline as well as online channels including Amazon and Flipkart. &nbs...

22May By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

Gurugram-based Milk Delivery Startup Raises $7 Mn Series A Funding

Milkbasket, the grocery and milk delivery startup, recently raised $7 million in a series-A funding round led by Kalaari Capital. This funding round also saw the participation of existing investors Unilever Ventures and Blume Ventures and the arrival of new investor Beenext Ventures. The milk and grocery delivery space has seen several investments in recent times with startups such as Daily Ninja and Doodhwala raising funds. Earlier this year, Milkbasket raised $3 million from investment arm of consumer packaged goods company, Unilever. This latest influx of capital means that the milk and delivery startup has so far raised about $11 million. CEO Anant Goel announced that the funds raised will strengthen the startup’s technology, reach and abilities. Milkbasket currently serves ab...

22May By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

Bangalore-Based Video Creation Platform Raises Funding from Blume Ventures

Rocketium.com Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the video creation platform recently raised Rs 2 Crore ($ 300K) as seed funding round from Blume Ventures, the early stage-focused venture capital firm and several angel investors. The additional investors include Raghunandan G., co-founder and former CEO of TaxiForSure, now acquired by Ola; Hari TN, who heads the human resource of online grocery store BigBasket; senior executives from Apple, Freshworks, Microsoft and SpaceX notably also participated in this funding round, the video creation platform mentioned in a statement. Satej Sirur and Anurag Dwivedi, who were both former employees at TaxiForSure, founded Rocketium. The funds raised will serve the purpose of expanding the company’s global reach by hiring sales and marketing executives and bu...

E2E Networks Stellar IPO Listing May Open Up viable Exit Gate for VC’s

20May By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

Market

E2E Networks Stellar IPO Listing May Open Up viable Exit Gate for VC’s

The spectacular performance of Computing Infrastructure platform E2E Networks Ltd backed by Blume Ventures earlier this week could bring significant opportunity for VC exits through the route, as forecasted by the experts. The company's IPO marked a close on 7 May with over a subscription of 70 times, while it's listing on 15 May witnessed share closure at 56% above issue price of Rs. 57. E2E is involved in the business of cloud infrastructure that includes servers, networking, virtualisation and other open source software pieces. The company's IPO turned out to be magnificent bringing an end to the struggled journey that startup had been walking since it came out. The Cloud Infrastructure provider has reported a 37.5% jump in revenues from operations to Rs 29.3 crore for the year en...

Educational Tech Startup Raises INR 3.84 Crore From Sequoia Capital

7May By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

Educational Tech Startup Raises INR 3.84 Crore From Sequoia Capital

Unacademy, an edtech startup raised INR 3.84 crore funding from existing investors – Sequoia Capital, Saif Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures in a Series B equity round. Its parent company, Sorting Hat Technologies Private Limited allotted 400 Series B1 preference shares of Rs 100/- each and a premium of Rs 96,127.10/- per share. Previously, Unacademy raised an INR 75 crores Series B round in September 2017 led by Sequoia Capital and Saif Partners along with the participation of several other investors, notably, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, who is now CEO of Flatchat, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sachin Gupta. Initially, the edtech startup operated as a YouTube channel but its popularity propelled the platform...

Indian VC Industry Urged to Submit Papers On Issues Around Startup Ecosystem

9Apr By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

News

Indian VC Industry Urged to Submit Papers On Issues Around Startup Ecosystem

India's enterprise capital business has been urged to submit a white paper with policy recommendations to regulators that could help in addressing issues raised by stakeholders within the startup landscape. Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA) is a nodal body designated for Risk capital sector in India. The development has come right after a roundtable organised by Startup India, an initiative organised by Ministry of Commerce and chaired by Suresh Prabhu that witnessed participation of representatives from Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), market controller Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) , Small Industries Development Bank of India(SIDBI) and Department of Revenue and Economic Affairs. SIDBI Chairman, Mohammed Mustafa stated...

6Apr By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

Startup Improving Lives of Diabetics Raises Funding

BeatO, a platform dedicated in catering and facilitating the lives of diabetes patients recently raised an institutional round of funding worth $1.3 million led by Leo Capital in partnership with Blume Ventures. "We are extremely excited to associate with partners like Leo and Blume. India is expected to have 100M diabetics by 2030. This puts tremendous pressure on all stakeholders in the healthcare eco-system both from a cost and well-being perspective to specially cater to this large demographic. This funding is a re-enforcement to the fact that we are solving a problem of massive scale," said Gautam Chopra, co-founder and CEO, BeatO. BeatO makes use of smartphones, its app and a gluco-meter to monitor blood glucose in its patients along with the follow through of its experts. They...

15Feb By RishabhNo Comments

FUNDING

RailYatri To Raise $10 Million Funding From Omidyar Network

Indian Railway query platform RailYatri is in talks to secure a funding of $10 million from its existing investor Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm. This third round of funding will also see participation from its other existing investors including Blume Ventures, Helion Venture, Nandan Nilekani according to the source ET. “While the talks are on with our existing investors, the quantum of capital we will raise will depend on the scale we wish to achieve over the next 12-18 months,” Manish Rathi, co-founder of RailYatri told the source. The fresh capital will be used to expand the firm's offerings to capture the long-distance market through penetration in geographical spread of buses, along with the introduction of long-distance taxis. RailYatri will also be aiming ...

Hyperlocal Tasks Management App dunzo Bags $12.3M From Google

5Dec By RishabhNo Comments

FUNDING

Hyperlocal Tasks Management App dunzo Bags $12.3M From Google

Alphabet Inc's tech giant Google has led a $12.3 million round in Bangalore based Dunzo Digital Pvt Ltd owned daily tasks management app Dunzo, ET reported. The round also saw participation from its existing investors Blume Ventures and Aspada Investment Advisors, a person familiar with the development told the source. The investment is part of Google's Next Billion Users (NBU) push. The startup, which is present only in Bengaluru right now, plans to expand to other cities across India. "We want to expand to top 5-6 cities by end of 2018 and scale up from 1 lakh transactions a month right now to 1 lakh transactions a day," Biswas told ET. dunzo provides hyper local services like employ its app for an assortment of errands such as pick up food or grocery from that don't have deli...