Omnichannel Enablement Startup Omnivio Raises $1.02 Mn in Seed Round Led by Caret Capital, Blume, Eximius and Others

Startup will allocate the funds towards the development of its Omni-channel control towers and Orchestration product suite

Omnivio, a pioneering Omnichannel enablement company, has successfully raised USD 1.02 million (INR 8.4 crores) in its latest Seed Round of funding. The investment was led by Caret Capital, formerly known as Supply Chain Labs, with participation from prominent investors including Blume Ventures, Eximius VC, SuniconVenture Fund, Misfits, and several angel syndicates and individual investors from India, Middle East, and South East Asia. The platform had raised its angel round in August 2022. This latest round also saw participation from existing investors, 91 Ventures, Dexter Angels, and Supermorpehus, bringing the total funds raised by Omnivio to approximately INR 12 crores (USD 1.5 million).

Omnivio is on a mission to redefine the Omnichannel experience for retailers and omni-brands by addressing one of the most significant challenges in the industry—ensuring seamless customer experiences across multiple channels. With the Omnivio control tower and orchestration platform, the company offers post-checkout visibility and business operations control across marketplaces, own checkouts, and physical stores.

Commenting on the fundraise, Mr. Sidhartha Kumar Bhimania, Co-founder, Omnivio expressed his gratitude for the support received from top-tier investors, entrepreneurs, and angel investors from the ecosystem. Mr. Bhimania emphasized that this support is a testament to the calibre of the Omnivio team and the vast potential of their mission.

On the investment in Omnivio, Prajakt Raut, Managing Partner from Caret Capital affirmed “While omni-channel is rapidly becoming mainstream, companies find it challenging to transition from a pure offline player to an omni-channel player, or vice-versa, astheir existing supply chains and distribution networks are not designed for the omni-channel world.Startups can play an enabling role and Omnivio has been able to distinguish its strategy and business model. OmnivioSaas platform provides brands a control tower for managing synchronisation between different stakeholdersand deliversgold-standardconsumer experiences.We are excited to partner with Sidhartha, Anuj and the team at Omnivio as they march towards transforming India’s value chain. 

Omnivio intends to allocate the newly raised funds towards the development of its Omni-channel visibility and orchestration product suite. Additionally, the company plans to expand its enterprise Go-To-Market (GTM) teams in India and the Middle East. With this infusion of capital, Omnivio is well-positioned to continue its journey to become a category-defining Omnichannel enablement company.

About Omnivio:

Omnivio is an Omnichannel enablement company that is dedicated to addressing the challenges faced by retailers and omni-brands in providing seamless customer experiences across multiple channels. The company's innovative solutions, including the Omnivio control tower and orchestration platform, empower businesses with the post-checkout visibility and control necessary to thrive in the Omnichannel landscape.

Blume Ventures Raises $40 Mn in First Close of its Fund-III of $80 Mn Corpus

Mumbai headquartered early-stage venture capital firm, Blume Ventures, has marked the first close of its third fund at $40 million.

Blume, which primarily focuses on seed to Series A rounds, is targeting a total corpus of $80 million. It seeks to achieve the final close early next year.

Blume Ventures provides seed funding in the range of $50K - $250K to early-stage tech-focused/tech-enabled ventures. They are proponents of a collaborative approach and like to co-invest with like-minded angels and seed funds. They then provide follow-on investments to their stellar portfolio companies, ranging between $500K and $1.5 million.

According to Sanjay Nath, co-founder and managing partner, Blume, the capital will be deployed across 30-35 companies, with an average ticket size of about $1 million. “We are looking to go deeper and invest bigger now. Both investors and the start-up ecosystem have matured since we started,” Nath said in a statement to business daily.

While the venture capital (VC) firm invested $100,000 to $150,000 in its first outing in 2011, it had increased its ticket size to $250,000 to about half a million dollars for the second fund.

With its Fund-II having a larger corpus at play, Blume is looking to invest about 60-65% of the new fund in domestic-heavy sectors such as healthcare, financial services, travel, commerce and brands, jobs and education and digital media & entertainment.

Security, robotics, and Internet of Things companies, which can innovate and engineer with local talent pools and also have the ability to scale globally, will also be on its radar.

The rest will focus on software tech, including cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics, software-as-a-service, blockchain and deep technology.

Also, Blume will now look to pick up 15-25% stakes in its portfolio companies, said Nath, adding that it is vying for larger ownership and longer and deeper commitment to “winners”.

“The larger fund, compared with our humble $20 million beginnings in Fund I, allows us to lead investments more emphatically for higher ownership, commensurate to the value-adding platforms that we have built and in time for fantastic founders that are emerging from the success stories of the first cycle in Indian start-ups,” said Karthik Reddy, co-founder and managing partner, Blume Ventures.

So far, Blume has invested in over 100 companies leading in about 40 investment rounds. Some of its major investee startups includes TaxiForSure, Zenatix, Chillr (acquired by Truecaller), Grey Orange, Unacademy, HealthifyMe, Purplle, Railyatri, Turtlemint and Dunzo, amog others.

In July, Blume had announced that it will a launch venture capital fund exclusively for B2B (business-to-business) startups in India, for which it has partnered with two US-based venture firms - Silicon Valley-based Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures, who will contribute to the fund.

Blume was founded in 2010 by Nath and Reddy . It raised its debut fund of $20 million in 2011, and, subsequently, the $60 million second fund four years later.

Nath believes that some of the portfolio companies have the ability to scale massively and make users pay for their services, besides the ability to pivot.

“Seeing these common threads has also taught us more about investments and this will affect our future investment decisions as well. We will look more closely at these qualities, and whether founders possess them or not.”

Blume's existing investments are spread across travel, healthcare, cloud, and content, including robotics start-up GreyOrange, which raised $140 million last month, making it the higest funded robotic startup in India.

Fund III will also fuel Blume’s expansion in the Delhi National Capital Region and Bengaluru.

Source - DealStreet Asia

Blume Ventures Raises $40 Mn in First Close of its Fund-III of $80 Mn Corpus

Mumbai headquartered early-stage venture capital firm, Blume Ventures, has marked the first close of its third fund at $40 million.

Blume, which primarily focuses on seed to Series A rounds, is targeting a total corpus of $80 million. It seeks to achieve the final close early next year.

Blume Ventures provides seed funding in the range of $50K - $250K to early-stage tech-focused/tech-enabled ventures. They are proponents of a collaborative approach and like to co-invest with like-minded angels and seed funds. They then provide follow-on investments to their stellar portfolio companies, ranging between $500K and $1.5 million.

According to Sanjay Nath, co-founder and managing partner, Blume, the capital will be deployed across 30-35 companies, with an average ticket size of about $1 million. “We are looking to go deeper and invest bigger now. Both investors and the start-up ecosystem have matured since we started,” Nath said in a statement to business daily.

While the venture capital (VC) firm invested $100,000 to $150,000 in its first outing in 2011, it had increased its ticket size to $250,000 to about half a million dollars for the second fund.

With its Fund-II having a larger corpus at play, Blume is looking to invest about 60-65% of the new fund in domestic-heavy sectors such as healthcare, financial services, travel, commerce and brands, jobs and education and digital media & entertainment.

Security, robotics, and Internet of Things companies, which can innovate and engineer with local talent pools and also have the ability to scale globally, will also be on its radar.

The rest will focus on software tech, including cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics, software-as-a-service, blockchain and deep technology.

Also, Blume will now look to pick up 15-25% stakes in its portfolio companies, said Nath, adding that it is vying for larger ownership and longer and deeper commitment to “winners”.

“The larger fund, compared with our humble $20 million beginnings in Fund I, allows us to lead investments more emphatically for higher ownership, commensurate to the value-adding platforms that we have built and in time for fantastic founders that are emerging from the success stories of the first cycle in Indian start-ups,” said Karthik Reddy, co-founder and managing partner, Blume Ventures.

So far, Blume has invested in over 100 companies leading in about 40 investment rounds. Some of its major investee startups includes TaxiForSure, Zenatix, Chillr (acquired by Truecaller), Grey Orange, Unacademy, HealthifyMe, Purplle, Railyatri, Turtlemint and Dunzo, amog others.

In July, Blume had announced that it will a launch venture capital fund exclusively for B2B (business-to-business) startups in India, for which it has partnered with two US-based venture firms - Silicon Valley-based Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures, who will contribute to the fund.

Blume was founded in 2010 by Nath and Reddy . It raised its debut fund of $20 million in 2011, and, subsequently, the $60 million second fund four years later.

Nath believes that some of the portfolio companies have the ability to scale massively and make users pay for their services, besides the ability to pivot.

“Seeing these common threads has also taught us more about investments and this will affect our future investment decisions as well. We will look more closely at these qualities, and whether founders possess them or not.”

Blume's existing investments are spread across travel, healthcare, cloud, and content, including robotics start-up GreyOrange, which raised $140 million last month, making it the higest funded robotic startup in India.

Fund III will also fuel Blume’s expansion in the Delhi National Capital Region and Bengaluru.

Source - DealStreet Asia

Blume Ventures To Launch ₹40 Crore Fund & Accelerator Exclusively for B2B Startups in India

Mumbai-based early-stage tech-focused venture fund, Blume Ventures (Blume), is all set to launch venture capital fund exclusively for B2B (business-to-business) startups in India. For this, Blume has partnered with two US-based venture firms - Silicon Valley-based Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures, who will contribute to the fund.

Blume along with its US partners will also be launching accelerator platform -- Arka Venture Labs, in India to to help facilitate global transition and faster growth of B2B startups in India.

Arka Venture Labs, which would play dual role of "a fund" as well as a "Startup Accelerator platform", will provide seed and pre-seed capital of up to $200,000 for startups in the B2B space along with mentorship, infrastructure and access to the Silicon Valley ecosystem that will be critical in scaling up B2B startups in globally developed markets.

Initially, Arka Venture Labs and the fund have a corpus of about Rs 40 crore ($6 million) and has already achieved its first close. The platform has received interest from both Indian and US-based corporates, family offices and global high-net worth individuals and then the fund's corpus may go up in amount.

As Arka Venture Labs is joint venture of an Indian and two US-based venture firms, the platform will offer capital, cross-border ecosystem linkages and access to a global customer base to those tech-focused B2B startups that work in areas of retail, supply chain, robotics as also deep technology including artificial intelligence, big data and analytics amongst others under its platform.

To be eligible for Arka platform & fund, the startups are expected to have a minimum viable product with a strong potential to scale in the US and Europe with the platform looking to enable completion of the proof of concept (POC) within 6-9 months and have at least 1-2 paying clients on board. Going forward, the three funds will enable follow-on rounds for startups under this platform.

“We help Indian enterprise startups overcome the ‘trust gap’ that exists between them and customers, investors and acquirers alike when making a global transition. We plan to make Arka Venture Labs an open and collaborative platform to bring in all the help we need to bridge this trust gap for our companies,” said Yashwanth Hemaraj, investor at BGV and one of the founding partners at Arka Venture Labs.

"Once startups in B2B space look at developed markets like US and Europe for a client base, their scale of growth and profitability get an incredible boost due to such markets’ propensity for high profit margins and lesser sales cycles. Hence, we decided to create a platform early in startups’ life cycle to enable this growth path,” said Radhesh Kanumury, managing partner of Arka Venture Labs, also advisor to Blume.

Notably, about 40% of Blume Ventures’ portfolio in India consists of B2B startups including Grey Orange Robotics, Exotel, Belong and Instamojo, among others.

In April, Blume led $1.3 million investment in BeatO, a Delhi-based tech-enabled diabetes management startup. Prior to this, it has led $1 million pre-series A round of funding of Pitstop, an after-sales car service provider, in September 2017.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - VCCircle.com]

Blume Ventures To Launch ₹40 Crore Fund & Accelerator Exclusively for B2B Startups in India

Mumbai-based early-stage tech-focused venture fund, Blume Ventures (Blume), is all set to launch venture capital fund exclusively for B2B (business-to-business) startups in India. For this, Blume has partnered with two US-based venture firms - Silicon Valley-based Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures, who will contribute to the fund.

Blume along with its US partners will also be launching accelerator platform -- Arka Venture Labs, in India to to help facilitate global transition and faster growth of B2B startups in India.

Arka Venture Labs, which would play dual role of "a fund" as well as a "Startup Accelerator platform", will provide seed and pre-seed capital of up to $200,000 for startups in the B2B space along with mentorship, infrastructure and access to the Silicon Valley ecosystem that will be critical in scaling up B2B startups in globally developed markets.

Initially, Arka Venture Labs and the fund have a corpus of about Rs 40 crore ($6 million) and has already achieved its first close. The platform has received interest from both Indian and US-based corporates, family offices and global high-net worth individuals and then the fund's corpus may go up in amount.

As Arka Venture Labs is joint venture of an Indian and two US-based venture firms, the platform will offer capital, cross-border ecosystem linkages and access to a global customer base to those tech-focused B2B startups that work in areas of retail, supply chain, robotics as also deep technology including artificial intelligence, big data and analytics amongst others under its platform.

To be eligible for Arka platform & fund, the startups are expected to have a minimum viable product with a strong potential to scale in the US and Europe with the platform looking to enable completion of the proof of concept (POC) within 6-9 months and have at least 1-2 paying clients on board. Going forward, the three funds will enable follow-on rounds for startups under this platform.

“We help Indian enterprise startups overcome the ‘trust gap’ that exists between them and customers, investors and acquirers alike when making a global transition. We plan to make Arka Venture Labs an open and collaborative platform to bring in all the help we need to bridge this trust gap for our companies,” said Yashwanth Hemaraj, investor at BGV and one of the founding partners at Arka Venture Labs.

"Once startups in B2B space look at developed markets like US and Europe for a client base, their scale of growth and profitability get an incredible boost due to such markets’ propensity for high profit margins and lesser sales cycles. Hence, we decided to create a platform early in startups’ life cycle to enable this growth path,” said Radhesh Kanumury, managing partner of Arka Venture Labs, also advisor to Blume.

Notably, about 40% of Blume Ventures’ portfolio in India consists of B2B startups including Grey Orange Robotics, Exotel, Belong and Instamojo, among others.

In April, Blume led $1.3 million investment in BeatO, a Delhi-based tech-enabled diabetes management startup. Prior to this, it has led $1 million pre-series A round of funding of Pitstop, an after-sales car service provider, in September 2017.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - VCCircle.com]

Blume Venture Is India's Most Active Tech VC Followed By IAN and Sequoia India

India is still a developing economy, and in order to bridge that gap between developing and developed, India still has a lot of sectors to work on like health, finance, defence etc. And, the one sector which can really help in making all these sectors progress is the tech sector.

The Indian startup industry has witnessed a lot of investment activity happening in the tech sector in the last couple of years. In fact, the year 2016 saw a record number of deals taking place in the tech space. While 2017 might not be going that well when it comes to the deal pace, but the funding is advancing in a celebratory trajectory and is currently witnessing more than triple the deals that took place last year.

According to a CB Insights report, early-stage investors are currently the most active in the tech space in India, with Mumbai-based Blume Ventures right at the top of the ladder.

The report, which took into account investments that took place in the Indian tech startups from 2012 to 2017, ranked the Mumbai VC firm as the leading tech investor on the basis of the investments it made in 76 companies. The VC, which is known for participating in seed or pre-Series A stages, typically invests a sum of anywhere between $100,000 to $500,000 in each of the startups that it adds to its portfolio. One of the most popular startup in its folio is TaxiForSure, which later got acquired by Ola in a deal worth a whopping $200 million.

According to the CB Insights report, the biggest round that the VC participated in was a $30-million Series B round two years ago in 2015. It was raised by warehouse automation systems provider Grey Orange Robotics.

The report further divulged that Angel groups were some of the most active investors in the Indian tech startup sector, with Indian Angel Network (IAN) coming in at the second place by making investments in 64 companies. Partners India and Sequoia Capital India took the third place together on the list by investing in 55 startups each.

A close look on the list reveals that off the ten most active investors, two of the firms were of foreign origin. They were: New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Hong Kong headquartered SAIF Partners. While Tiger invested in 36 companies, SAIF invested in 35.