Blume Ventures elevates Arpit Agarwal, Sajith Pai as investment partners

Early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures has elevated two of its senior investment team members Arpit Agarwal and Sajith Pai as investment partners. The move comes just months after the final close of Blume Ventures’ Fund IV with a corpus of $290 million (about Rs 2,400 crore).

“While Blume has raised its largest-ever fund, it has been with the implicit nod by our investors that we have five strong investment leaders now, each with a strong grip on the sectors they specialise in,” the firm said in a statement.

Agarwal, who joined Blume in 2014, heads the emerging tech vertical at the firm, including electric vehicles and climate tech. Pai, along with Karthik Reddy, leads domestic consumer internet and B2B marketplaces, including edtech, health, commerce and brands.

Sanjay Nath oversees the firm’s cross-border SaaS investments, whereas Ashish Fafadia heads the fintech and agri segments.

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Founded by Reddy and Nath in 2010, Blume typically invests in pre-seed to pre-Series A funding rounds of technology companies and has built a large portfolio over the past decade, holding positions in edtech firm Unacademy, quick-commerce platform Dunzo, fintech firm Slice, used-car selling platform Spinny, beauty e-tailer Purplle and full-stack customer engagement platform Exotel.

“Blume’s multi-sectoral expertise across tech comes from the evolution of the fund into these sectoral buckets managed with ~$50 million of capital per investment lead and their respective underlying teams,” it added.

ET had reported in December that Blume’s Fund-IV will be managed by its investment team of over 15 members, led by Pai, Agarwal, Fafadia, Nath and Reddy.

Through this fund, it plans to back 30-35 companies in technology verticals such as fintech, deep-tech, robotics and artificial intelligence, healthcare and consumer Internet.

“Arpit has been instrumental in shaping portfolio construction since his first investment for Blume in Cashify in 2015. He also led the formation and growth of MetaMorph (previously Passion Connect), one of Blume’s key partners in talent management at our portfolio companies. He has established himself as a thought and community leader in emerging fields such as deeptech, health tech, and EVs/clean tech and has played a key role in fostering a vibrant B2B/enterprise practice at Blume,” the statement said.

Pai, who joined Blume in 2018, has invested in companies across edtech, HRtech, B2B marketplaces, workforce enablement, and other consumer internet business models.

“He has additionally exemplified one of our core values of high ownership by leading and deepening our research as well as marketing & content efforts, helping grow our team and leadership in these areas,” the firm said.

Blume also recently made the first close of its $60 million continuity fund, through which it will invest in some of its portfolio startups including Purplle, Carbon Clean, Cashify and Zopper.

“With over 25 companies at more than a $100 million valuation and 10 ‘soonicorns’ (>$500 million in the last valuation) and unicorns, the Blume team is prepared to back another generation of transformational startup founders with the widening leadership team,” it added.