In Full Blume | A Month of Milestones, Cricket Gaming and Space Sensing | April 2026Updates from the Blume portfolio
Here’s a look at what Blume’s portfolio companies were up to in April. This was a month where milestones stacked up, anniversaries, ARR thresholds crossed, monthly revenue numbers that used to be annual ones, alongside new funding rounds and M&As LightFury Games (Fund IV) closed an $11M Pre-Series A to build the world’s first AAA-rated cricket franchise, E-Cricket, with Indian cricket royalty, MS Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Tilak Varma, and Sai Sudharsan, joining as investors. Optimized Electrotech (Fund IV) raised ₹35 Cr (~USD 4.2M) to extend its AI-native imaging stack from defence into space-based sensing. Thanks for reading In Full Blume! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Slice (Fund I) opened up its UPI credit card to its 1.2 million-strong waitlist, marking the first large-scale use of the UPI network to build credit on top of it. Namma Yatri (Fund IV) went live at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport. Pixxel (Fund III) made headlines with plans to scale its satellite manufacturing capacity from 25 to 100 in parallel. Exotel (Fund II) acqui-hired the core team of voice AI startup Dubverse to deepen its AI-led CX play. Meanwhile, Karthik Reddy continued his series celebrating 15 Years of Blume Days with a piece on the Blume Tee — the unofficial uniform of every Blume Day. Let’s get into it. 👇 Funding Updates From Our PortfolioCricket Meets AAA Gaming: LightFury Games Raises $11M
LightFury Games (Fund IV) has raised $11M in a Pre-Series A round backed by us, V3 Ventures, Times Internet, and MIXI Global Investments, What gives this round its weight is the cricketing names that joined as investors: MS Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Tilak Varma, and Sai Sudharsan. Their belief turns this from a gaming bet into a sport and culture one. Founded by Karan Shroff, Anurag Banerjee, Tina Balachandran, and the LightFury team, the studio is building E-Cricket — what it describes as the world’s first AAA-rated cricket franchise. For anyone who grew up on EA Cricket 07, Don Bradman Cricket, or the Brian Lara and Ashes Cricket games, the gap in the market is familiar: nothing has felt quite right for cricket fans for over a decade. Karthik Reddy, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures said, “We’ve backed LightFury from inception, in their mission to pioneer a new generation of Indian gaming studios, building IPs with global ambition. Building a AAA game is neither easy nor quick - it takes sustained creative excellence, deep technical expertise, and long-term discipline. In LightFury, we’ve seen a team come together from different parts of the world, with a shared passion and incredible attention to detail, depth and creativity. Supercharged by natively built AI tools, we are excited for the world to experience eCricket very soon. We would like it to be the Dhurandhar of Indian gaming history.” From Ground to Orbit: Optimized Electrotech Raises ₹35 Cr (~$4.2M)Optimized Electrotech Pvt Ltd (Fund IV) has raised ₹35 Cr in a round led by Exfinity Venture Partners, with participation from us, Mela Ventures, and Venture Catalysts. Founded by Sandeep Shah and Dharin Shah, the company builds electro-optic systems for defence and space, with four patents, multiple iDEX wins, and active deployments with the Indian Army, Indian Navy, BDL, BEL, and ISRO. The new round funds an important shift: extending its AI-native imaging stack from ground-based systems into space. The company has now secured initial orders for a satellite platform, marking its formal entry into space-based sensing — with a pathway toward constellation-scale imaging and surveillance. As Sandeep shared: “India needs a unified, sovereign sensing capability that works seamlessly from land to orbit. That belief has shaped how we’ve built our technology — from the ground up.” Arpit Agarwal, Partner at Blume Ventures, adds: “India’s defence indigenisation wave is creating generational opportunities, and Optimized Electrotech stands out with battle-tested electro-optic platforms combining advanced sensors and AI. As it moves into space-based imagery, we’re excited to back Sandeep and Dharin again.” New Launches and Product Momentumslice Credit Card Goes Live for Everyone slice (Fund II) opened up its credit card to all users in April, after a months-long waitlist of 1.2 million customers. As founder Rajan Bajaj shared, this is India’s first UPI credit card that rewards everyday spending — whether it’s a ₹10 chai or a ₹1 lakh flight ticket. It’s also the first large-scale use of the UPI network to build credit on top of it. For context: Affirm and Klarna in the West offer no-cost installments at only 0.5 to 1 million merchants. The slice UPI credit card brings 3-month no-cost EMI to a meaningfully larger merchant footprint, available natively over UPI. Read the full announcement here Flight nimdu. Ride namdu.: Namma Yatri Goes Live at Bengaluru Airport
Namma Yatri (Fund IV) went live at Kempegowda International Airport, covering both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, in April. As the Namma Yatri team put it: “Some launches are loud. Some are built quietly, with intent.” For a platform that’s spent years building open-mobility infrastructure city by city, the airport launch is a meaningful unlock — the first and last mile for thousands of travellers a day. Company MilestonesLeverage Edu Wraps Up a Strong FY2025-26 Leverage Edu (Fund III) turned 9 and had a strong FY 2025-26, more than doubling revenue to ₹375 Cr+ (+112% YoY) (~USD 45M+) while turning EBITDA-positive and generating free cash flow on a full-year basis, a rare combination of growth and capital efficiency. Here are how the stats stack up:
As Akshay Chaturvedi, founder and CEO of Leverage Edu, framed it: “Build with a big heart, keep young individuals & their upward mobility at the centre of everything, think about impact every single day, play for the really long run (think in century times as we do!), and head down just always do the damn right thing by everyone.” Read the full FY26 highlights post here WebEngage (Fund I) crossed ₹250 Cr (~USD 30M) in ARR in FY2025-26, and just as importantly, did it profitably. Founder Avlesh Singh marked the moment with a candid LinkedIn post: “We delivered a solid year at WebEngage in FY25-26. After years of piling up losses and slow growth, we have finally turned things around true to our Spartan identity and demeanour. We are now an INR ~250 Crore ARR business — profitable and growing.” Read Avlesh’s reflection here Classplus (Fund III) hit its first ₹40 Cr+ month(~USD 4.8M) in March 2026, a number that, four years ago, took the company an entire year to clock. Reflecting on the moment, founder Mukul Rustagi wrote on LinkedIn: “4 years ago, we did 40 Cr in an entire year. Last month, we crossed 40 Cr in a single month. 4 years of staying heads down = annual becomes monthly. A strong 12x growth. No shortcuts. No hype cycles. No overnight playbook. Just staying in the game long enough to see compounding happen. Always remember this.” The context makes it sweeter: this 12x came through what Mukul described as one of the most brutal phases in EdTech, where survival itself felt like a win. Read Mukul’s full reflection here M&A and Strategic MovesExotel Acqui-Hires the Dubverse Team to Power Its AI-Led CX Play Exotel (Fund I) has acqui-hired the core team of voice AI startup Dubverse, including co-founders Anuja Dhawan and Varshul Gupta, alongside five-to-six other senior hires, to sharpen its push toward becoming an AI-first customer engagement platform. Exotel’s founder and CEO, Shivakumar Ganesan (”Shivku”) shared on LinkedIn: “Most enterprises are flying blind on 90% of their customer conversations. CQA fixes that. Every conversation, evaluated in real time, against the enterprise’s own standards. The Dubverse team built voice and language AI models from scratch and shipped them in production — 3 million users, 70+ languages. That kind of depth doesn’t come one hire at a time. It comes as a team. We got that team. May the building begin!” In the NewsPixxel Targets 100-Satellite Parallel Production Pixxel (Fund III) is scaling its satellite manufacturing capacity from a current parallel build of 20–25 satellites to 100 satellites over the next year, to meet growing global demand for hyperspectral data. The Bengaluru-based company currently operates out of its ~30,000 sq. ft. Mega Pixxel facility, which can handle 20+ satellites simultaneously with a six-month turnaround. The expansion plan signals a shift from boutique satellite production to industrial-scale manufacturing — a meaningful step for an Indian space startup that’s already counting NASA among its customers. 15 Years of Blume Days | The Little ThingsKarthik continued his series this month with the fourth installment. #4: The Blume Day Tee
As Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Partner, wrote: “The Blume Tee is an emotion one wears — not on their sleeve, but on their chest, close to the heart.” Every year, the tee reflects Blume’s internal mood — and inevitably mirrors a similar phase in many founder journeys. That shared emotional state is what inspires each year’s winning slogan. On Blume Day #15, two companies on the stage were heading toward IPO journeys — PhonePe and Blume’s very own Turtlemint — making the tee, and the year, feel especially weighty. That’s all this month. See you next month. Team Blume Thanks for reading In Full Blume! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 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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