In Full Blume: Our new fund, new rounds by Pixxel, Leverage Edu, HealthifyMe, and more

Updates from the Blume team and portfolio companies

Jul 06, 2023

It’s nice to have you back here. Welcome to In Full Blume, our monthly roundup of updates from the Blume team and portfolio.

Let’s see what’s in store in this edition:

A Blume-worthy announcement of our new opportunity fund
New rounds of funding for Pixxel, HealthifyMe, LeverageEdu, Smartstaff and more
The new Ultrahuman Ring Air (and another bonus win!)
And lastly, highlights from Venture Intelligence’s Series A Landscape report for 2023.

Leading the Way

It’s been a busy month for us at Blume. We’re stoked to announce that we made the first close of our new opportunity fund, Fund 1Y, at $25 Mn. This is Blume’s third growth fund and it comes right on the heels of the $290 Mn Fund IV we raised last year.

Fund 1Y is backed by a high-quality LP base, with existing LPs in Blume Ventures’ other funds participating again. We raised a similar-sized opportunity fund in 2021 which bought out strong performers from Fund 1, and a majority of the portfolio’s underlying metrics have grown at more than 35% CAGR, resulting in follow-on rounds even in this market.

Here’s what Vikram Gawande, Vice President of Growth Investments at Blume, has to say about the close: “We have a fabulous set of winners in our portfolio, and I am glad that we have been able to raise additional capital to stay invested longer and go deeper in our winners. We believe in the power of public markets and are confident that businesses such as Purplle, Zopper, Cashify and others in this portfolio are well entrenched on the path.”

Also, hear what this new opportunity fund means for Blume from our co-founder Karthik Reddy:

“It’s a global practice for Fund Managers like Blume to provide exits to the existing LPs by finding new investors who can buy out a combination of assets from the original Fund. Blume is one of the first VCs in India to have executed this structure with the new investors also being onshore.”

Funding Spotlight

Passport to the Future

This is hot off the press! Noida-based study abroad platform Leverage Edu bagged $40 Mn in its Series C funding round led by Educational Testing Service (ETS), the global language testing and assessment conglomerate. After this fundraising round, which includes the participation of existing investors, the company is expected to be valued at around $150 Mn. This marks a 25% bump in Leverage Edu’s previous valuation in March 2022 when it raised $22 Mn from a consortium of funds, family offices and individual angels. Founded by Akshay Chaturvedi in 2017, Leverage Edu assists students from India, Nigeria, Nepal and other markets to apply to universities abroad and will utilize the fresh capital to focus on the higher education market in the US.

Space is the Limit

Spacetech startup Pixxel raised $36 Mn in its Series B funding round led by Google.

Existing investors Radical Ventures, Lightspeed, GrowX, Sparta, Athera and Blume Ventures also participated in the funding round. Founded by BITS Pilani alumni Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal in 2018, the Bengaluru and California-based startup plans to use the funds for developing satellites and infrastructure for multiple launches in early 2024. The capital will also be used to develop Aurora, the company’s AI-powered analytics platform, which aims to make hyperspectral imagery analysis accessible to everyone. The latest round brings Pixxel's total venture funding to $71 Mn. To know more about how Pixxel’s satellites are keeping an eye on the future, read this incisive commentary by our editorial lead Disha Sharma.

Health on the Go

HealthifyMe, the Bengaluru-based health and fitness platform, secured $30 Mn in a pe-Series D funding round led by LeapFrog Investments, Khosla Ventures, Finnish development financier FinnFund, and Dutch investment firm Van Lanschot Kempen. The investment is a mix of equity and venture debt. The round also included existing investors: Unilever Ventures, Blume Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, and Healthquad. The startup will utilize the fresh capital towards developing its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered product, after having introduced Ria, an AI-powered virtual assistant in 2017, to offer nutrition and fitness advice in over 10 languages.

Smart Minds Think Alike

Smartstaff, the Bengaluru-based blue-collar workforce management platform, raised $6.2 Mn in a Series A funding round from existing investors Blume Ventures, Nexus Ventures, Arkam Ventures, and new investor Alteria Capital. The company plans to use the funding to expand geographically and foray into newer industries. Founded in 2021 by Arpit Dave, Viral Chhajer, Gnanesh Chilukuri, and Aravind Reddy, Smartstaff aims to help businesses hire and manage their blue-collar workforce by digitizing workforce management practices.

Bonus: Sometime last year, Sajith Pai wrote about Smartstaff’s TAM by taking us on a text-journey from Howrah to Bangalore. Check it out here.

Flaunt Your Denim

Freakins, the homegrown denim fashion brand, raised $4 Mn in a seed round led by Blume Ventures and Matrix Ventures India which also saw the participation of over 30 angel investors.

The D2C brand will use the funds to expand its omnichannel presence, strengthen its supply chain operations, and enhance salience among its target audience. Co-founded by Puneet Sehgal and Shaan Shah in 2019, Freakins started operating as a women’s denim brand but entered the men’s category in February this year to emerge as a leading new-age denim wear brand.

Success Guaranteed

ZapScale, a customer success platform designed for B2B SaaS companies, raised $2.5 Mn in seed funding from Blume Ventures, Veda VC, Java Capital, 100xEntreprenuers, T2D3 Capital, and Arka Venture Labs among others. Led by founder and CEO Manasij Ganguli, ZapScale leverages AI technology to provide actionable insights and predictive analytics to address customer needs, reduce churn, and identify upsell opportunities. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of its Customer Success Platform, with a focus on enhancing its AI-driven capabilities and expanding its presence in the US market.

Early Victories

In more funding news, here’s a shoutout to LaundryMate, the Bengaluru-based online laundry services brand that raised $6.25 Mn in a pre-series A funding round and to Alltius, the Los Angeles-based generative AI company which announced that it closed its $2.4 Mn pre-seed funding round.

Blumiers and Shakers

Slow and Steady Wins the (Wearable) Race

Ultrahuman, the Bengaluru-based metabolic fitness platform, launched a new wearable device called Ultrahuman Ring Air, which succeeds the Ultrahuman Ring that the company launched last year. Besides tracking your sleep, the Ultrahuman Ring Air also boasts heart-rate monitoring LEDs and Infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG), a non-contact skin temperature sensor that tracks changes in the body’s physiological responses to factors like exercise, stress, and illness. At just 2.4 gms of average weight, the Ultrahuman Ring Air is the world’s lightest smart ring, 11x lighter than an average smartwatch. The new sleek design of the smart ring also makes it thinner than the earlier version.

And good design never goes unnoticed! On the heels of the launch of the Ultrahuman Ring Air, the Ultrahuman Ring won the 2023 Red Dot Design Award in Product Design. The honor puts the team in company of the finest brands in the world, including Ferrari, Porsche, Sony, and Apple, the other winners of the award. Congratulations to the entire team.

It Takes Two to IPO

In our last edition, we gave you a lowdown on the 13 years of Infollion’s existence that led to the company’s SME IPO. This time around, we want to take a moment to congratulate Gaurav Munjal on Infollion’s listing, which marks the second IPO in our portfolio. It was a momentous occasion, and we were so glad to have Sajith Pai as Blume’s official cheerleader at the launch. Also present was Tarun Dua of E2E Networks, which was Blume’s first-ever IPO. Hopefully, there are many more on the way. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for us!

This AI is not just a buzzword

Scribble Data, a machine learning and generative AI company, launched Hasper, a full–stack large language model (LLM)-based engine for business leaders to build AI-powered data products rapidly. Backed by Blume Ventures, Scribble Data enables organizations to unlock the true potential of data with secure hosting options that ensure trust, reliability, and data integrity. Hasper is the latest addition to Scribble Data’s flagship product, the Enrich Intelligence platform. With conversational interfaces, the platform will now enable the building of more sophisticated end-to-end workflows seamlessly using both structured and unstructured data.

To the Top

Last month, Venture Intelligence, a leading research firm, released the 2023 edition of its Series A Landscape report. As per the study, 289 companies raised Series A investments in 2022, a 7% increase from 2021.

Let’s break down key highlights from the report:

Blume Ventures was the Most Active Seed Investor in 2022
Blume Ventures was also the second Most Active Seed Investor from 2019 to 2022, closely following Sequoia Capital India (now Peak XV Partners).
To share some more good news, during the same period, Blume Ventures made it to the list of top Series A Investors as well.

You can read the full report here.

The Bengaluru Edition of our Investor Summit

Karthik B. Reddy addressing LPs at the event

After the Blume Ventures Investor Summit in Mumbai, we organized the second Investor Summit in Bengaluru. Blume Investment Partners, Karthik Reddy and Ashish Fafadia shared their insights about the macro environment, changes in the Indian VC/startup landscape, and Blume's performance in 2022. The highlight of the event was the soft launch of the Electric Vehicle Primer 2023, one of the most in-depth and comprehensive breakdowns of the Indian EV market by Blume Investment Partner, Arpit Agarwal. Arpit spoke about the market opportunities, emerging technologies, and market segments in the EV market and how Blume expects to play in this market.

In case you missed it, check out the primer here.

Jobs to Watch Out

Early this month, we launched our Job Board. This is your single source for the hottest jobs within the thriving Blume portfolio. Check out the list here:

SquadStack is a B2B services play helping high ticket consumer businesses optimize their sales funnel, founded by Apurv Agrawal, Kanika Jain, Rishabh Ladha, and Vikas Gulati.

Roles live right now:

Process Trainer: E-Commerce
Director - Account Management
Enterprise Sales Lead / Director of Sales
…and 9 more across finance, marketing, and project management.

STAGE - OTT for Bharat is a dialect-based, hyperlocal video entertainment platform (OTT) for the next billion users in India (Bharat), run by Vinay Singhal, Parveen Singhal, and Shashank Vaishnav.