In Full Blume | Coaches & Credit: Building India’s Travel and Lending Rails and More | October 2025Updates from our portfolio companiesWelcome to another edition of In Full Blume! We’re excited to share another month of fund raises, groundbreaking innovations and milestone moments from across our portfolio. This month was headlined by big moves across the portfolio—IntrCity SmartBus (Fund I vintage) raised a fresh round of capital to continue expanding India’s intercity grid, and Optimo Capital (Fund IV) raised ₹150 crore ($17 million) to take property‑backed credit deeper into Tier III India. In addition to these fundraises, PicSee (Fund IV) launched its bespoke, privacy‑first mutual photo exchange globally—rolling out across 27 countries and 160+ cities. It doesn’t stop there—SquadStack’s AI agents aced blind tests, Pixxel’s hyperspectral satellites opened up access to Canada, GreyOrange synced warehouse robots with 3PLs, Euler Motors scaled EV fleets, and LambdaTest brought home wins at Morgan Stanley’s Innovation Summit. Let’s dive in. 👇 Funding Updates From Our PortfolioHighways to High‑Growth: IntrCity SmartBus Raises $30M (~₹250 crore) to Deepen Intercity NetworkIntrCity SmartBus (Fund I vintage) raised $30 million led by A91 Partners. Founded by Manish Rathi and Kapil Raizada, IntrCity is a tech-enabled bus platform that offers reliable and comfortable travel across cities in India. We first partnered with the company in 2011 and are proud to support their journey as they scale intercity travel across India. IntrCity already operates 600 daily trips, serving 20–25K passengers per day. It is EBITDA-positive and expect to become fully profitable this year. They grew their revenue 67% YoY to ₹500 crore (~$57M) last fiscal and target ₹700 crore (~$79M) this year. The fresh capital will help IntrCity go deeper into India’s cities and towns, enhance safety and customer experience, and upgrade its fleet management technology. Secured Lending, Built for Bharat: Optimo Capital Secures ₹150 crore (~$17M) to Scale Secured LendingOptimo Capital (Fund IV) raised ₹150 crore led by founder Prashant Pitti (former co-founder, EaseMyTrip). We participated in the round along with Omnivore. The company also raised ₹110 crore (~$12M) in debt from IDFC and Axis Bank. Optimo Capital is a fintech-NBFC focused on loans against property (LAP), serving ~4.8 crore small-business owners with thin credit histories. The company uses digital land records and AI for giving approvals within hours and disbursals in under a week. The new capital will bolster tech and AI, expand co-lending, and drive Tier III growth. In 18 months, Optimo built a ₹350 crore loan book and opened 56 branches across five states. It also turned profitable within three months of launch. New LaunchesGive‑to‑Get: PicSee’s Privacy‑First Photo ExchangeBillion Hearts (Fund IV) founded by Mayank Bidawatka (former co-founder of Koo), launched PicSee, a give-to-get photo exchange platform. PicSee makes sharing effortless and safe—everything stays on your phone (encrypted, screenshot‑blocked, no cloud) while its AI finder and face recognition identify friends, streamline invites/approvals, and enable ongoing exchange. Early users quickly rediscovered forgotten snapshots with friends—instant nostalgia. Since its soft launch in July, PicSee has been downloaded in 27 countries with 150K+ images shared and AI editing on the roadmap. Read more here. To try out the app and unearth pictures of yourself and your friends, click here. Pixxel x PacGeo: Hyperspectral Eyes on CanadaPixxel (Fund III) signed with Pacific Geomatics to deliver 135+ band hyperspectral imagery across mining, forestry, agriculture, and environmental monitoring in Canada—following August launches that expanded the Firefly constellation to six satellites. Want to know how Pixxel is reaching for the stars? Here’s our spotlight article highlighting how Pixxel is redefining Earth observation. Sounds Human, Works Smarter: SquadStack’s Turing‑Tested Voice AISquadStack (Fund II) unveiled AI agents that matched or beat human performance in blind listening and live campaign tests—81% of listeners couldn’t tell the AI from humans, at up to 5× lower cost. This is a decisive step toward outcome-led, fully AI-driven contact centers. Euler Motors Deploys 100+ Storm EVs with Fitsol Supply ChainEuler Motors (Fund III) partnered with Fitsol to deploy 100+ Storm EVs, advancing low-emission logistics. High payload, modern design, and robust battery tech make the Storm a workhorse for reliable, sustainable commercial fleets. Ultrahuman Launches Vision CloudUltrahuman (Fund III) introduced Vision Cloud—the world’s first universal health report interpreter. Users can upload blood tests today (MRIs/CTs soon) for clinician-level summaries, actionable guidance, multi-report trend analysis, and integration with Ring AIR and UltraTrace™ for biomarker-to-lifestyle insights. Mysa Unveils “Most Intelligent Bill Scan”—LLM + ML, 99.9% AccuracyMysa (Fund IV) rolled out an AI bill scanner that understands rather than just extracts—trained on millions of vendor formats across 20+ languages. A dual-engine (LLM + ML) architecture validates reasoning against tax and calculation ground truth, ensuring clean, compliant outputs for end-to-end payables. Milestones & Achievements14 Years, Day 1 Energy: WebEngage’s Composable Customer Data Platform (CDP) at ScaleWebEngage (Fund I vintage) marked 14 years as India & Middle East’s leading CDP and engagement platform. The company has over 900 customers and more than a billion unified profiles. Going forward, as data complexity grows, WebEngage’s platform will help turn fragmented signals into measurable outcomes that will enable faster personalisation for marketing teams worldwide. We documented how WebEngage rebuilt itself — from a struggling startup to one of India’s most successful SaaS stories. Read the full spotlight article here. GreyOrange x Kenco: Robots + People, Perfectly In SyncGreyOrange (Fund I vintage) signed a long-term deal with Third Party Logistics (3PL) leader Kenco Group to deploy the GreyMatter Multi-Process Orchestration Platform across its fulfilment centers. The move will create one system that brings people, processes, and robots together—so fulfillment runs faster and scales easily. Read more here. Want to know what makes GreyOrange special? We wrote a spotlight article chronicling GreyOrange’s journey and its quest to build the first Indian $1 Billion ARR deep-tech company. Read it here. LambdaTest Takes the Spotlight at India Innovation Summit 2025LambdaTest (Fund III) was recognised as a winner at Morgan Stanley’s India Innovation Summit 2025, spotlighting the company’s leadership in quality engineering. The company recently unveiled Agent-to-Agent Testing, the world’s first platform to validate and assess AI agents as well as KaneAI, its native AI testing agent. Niqo Robotics at FIRA: Precision Farming, Podium FinishNiqo Robotics (Fund IV) took second place for its RoboThinner™ in the “Best FIRA USA Robot – Participants’ Choice” category, validating precision agri automation that boosts yields and reduces chemical usage. For context, FIRA is the worlds largest agritech summit that connects startups, farmers, VCs and innovators. Read more here. Want to read how AI is transforming agriculture firsthand? Read our spotlight feature on ‘How Jaisimha is Teaching AI to Farm‘ to discover the fascinating journey behind the birth of Niqo. Carbon Clean: Turning CO₂ into Cross‑Border MomentumCarbon Clean (Fund I vintage) participated in the UK Prime Minister’s trade mission to India, advancing UK–India collaboration in Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS). With India preparing its national CCUS Mission, Carbon Clean is positioned to catalyse industrial decarbonisation from its Global Innovation Centre in Mumbai. Regional Stories, Real Jobs: STAGE’s MSME Employment WinSTAGE (Fund IV) took home the Employment Generation award at the MSME Bharat Summit & Awards 2025—recognition for its regional-first entertainment model that scales storytelling and jobs across Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and other local languages. In The NewsSmall‑Town Superstores: Inside SuperK’s Bharat PlaySuperK (Fund IV) is modernising kirana retail with clean aisles, digital billing, and data-driven assortments. A recent on-ground feature from Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, traced SuperK’s rapid expansion and co-founder Anil Thontepu’s belief that the next retail chapter will be written in small-town India—through design, trust, and tech. To watch the full video, click below: Old Phones, New Lives: Cashify’s AI‑Led ‘Refurbia’Cashify (Fund I vintage) released Refurbia, its first in-house AI-produced brand film. The campaign brings transparency to Cashify’s collection-to-refurbishment flow, framing every renewed device as a win for e-waste reduction and the circular economy. Watch the full video below: See you next month. Team Blume In Full Blume gives you a lowdown on what our portfolio companies and team members have been up to in the past month. You may want to check out Blume Fieldnotes, another newsletter from Blume’s stable, that curates the best reads and unmissable insights amassed by the team. Stay tuned. |
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Tuesday, 4 November 2025
In Full Blume | Coaches & Credit: Building India’s Travel and Lending Rails and More | October 2025
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