In Full Blume | From Health Tech to Space Tech, and Destiny Avenged | May 2026Updates from the Blume portfolio
Here’s a look at what Blume’s portfolio companies were up to in May. This month brought fresh capital, a wave of bold product launches, two packed events for the community and a very special book making its way into bookstores across the country. Nivasa Finance (Fund V) closed ₹25 Cr in seed funding to unlock housing credit for underserved borrowers across non-metro India. On the product front: Ultrahuman (Fund III) opened the Performance Lab and unveiled Photon. Exotel (Fund I) made its MCP debut, getting Claude to place a real phone call. We also hosted two intimate, candid events: a Fundraising Masterclass and a CFO Engagement session. Karthik B. Reddy’s new book, Destiny Avenged, launched in bookstores and available online. Let’s get into it. 👇 Funding Updates From Our PortfolioHousing Credit for Bharat: Nivasa Finance Raises ₹25 Cr Seed
Nivasa Finance (Fund V), building access to secured LAP and affordable home loans for underserved borrowers in non-metro India, closed a ₹25 Cr seed round from Prime Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and a group of angels. As founder Samit Shankar Shetty shared: “Customer experience that was unthinkable for the segment, and lender engagement that is open, visible and cost-effective that is the ask in this AI age.” New Launches and Product MomentumExotel Gives Claude a Phone: Launching MCP-Powered Voice AI Exotel (Fund I) made a significant product debut this month: it launched MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration, allowing AI models like Claude, Codex, and Cursor to place real phone calls on behalf of users, no coding, no journey designing, no rule-based processing required. Read the full launch post here Ultrahuman Performance Lab: Open for Business
After over a year of building, Ultrahuman (Fund III) launched its Performance Lab in Bengaluru and it’s unlike anything else in the city. The lab captures up to 3,500 markers across genetics, blood biomarkers, VO2 max, pulmonary function, body composition, gut microbiome, biomechanics, sleep, and cognition synthesised by Ultrahuman’s Biointelligence AI into a personalized action plan. Not just a product story, Ultrahuman also launched Ring PRO on Kickstarter (their best ring yet, at early-backer pricing) and unveiled Ultrahuman Photon, a red and near-infrared light therapy device for skin and recovery, designed to fit into real everyday life. The month also included a major research milestone: Ultrahuman became the first platform to passively track the physiological impact of sustained conflict at population scale, across 65 countries. Explore the Performance Lab here Portfolio Milestones and AchievementsPixxel + Sarvam: India’s First Orbital Data Centre Satellite Pixxel (Fund III) and Sarvam AI announced a strategic partnership to build and launch Pathfinder, India’s first orbital data centre satellite. The 200 kg-class spacecraft, scheduled for launch as early as Q4 2026, will carry data centre-grade GPUs and full-stack sovereign AI models, enabling real-time inference in space without dependence on ground infrastructure or foreign cloud. As Awais Ahmed, CEO of Pixxel, put it: “Ground-based data centres are facing increasing constraints around energy, land, regulation, and scale.” The future of AI infrastructure, it turns out, may be in orbit. Read the Economic Times coverage here
Euler Motors (Fund III) closed FY26 with revenue from operations of ₹402 Cr (~$48M), more than double the ₹191 Cr (~$23M) reported in FY25. The company sold 7,576 electric vehicles in the year, up 181% YoY, with the Turbo EV 1000 capturing a 25.9% market share in its category across three-wheeler cargo, four-wheeler cargo, and three-wheeler passenger segments. From under 1% EV penetration in commercial three-wheelers when Euler entered the market, to category definer, this is what patient, long-game building looks like. Read the full results coverage here Carbon Clean (Fund I) was ranked #210 in the Financial Times FT1000 list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, recognition of a year of meaningful progress as the team advances its modular, next-generation carbon capture technology from engineering into real-world deployment. The recognition coincided with a significant moment: CEO Aniruddha Sharma was at 10 Downing Street discussing the UK-GCC Free Trade Agreement, which opens important new territory for climate technology companies like Carbon Clean with existing projects in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Read the Carbon Clean announcement here
Rajan Bajaj, founder and CEO of slice (Fund II), shared a brief but significant milestone: FY26 was their first full year operating as a bank and their first full year of profit. The month also saw slice launch slice one, billed as India’s first AI-powered bank branch: open a bank account in two minutes, deposit cash, and collect your debit card on the spot. Ethereal Machines Chosen as Manufacturing Partner for Deepinder Goyal’s Temple Ethereal Machines (Fund III) was selected as a precision manufacturing partner for Temple, the brain-monitoring wearable startup founded by Deepinder Goyal (Eternal/Zomato). Temple, which builds sensor-based wearable patches that measure cerebral blood flow continuously, recently shipped its first 100 introductory units and is now ramping toward a few thousand units targeting both Indian and US markets. Community CornerFundraising Masterclass: The Unwritten Rules We hosted a closed-door Founder Fundraising Masterclass with an external investor, in-house expert and founder case studies in the same room. A few lines that stuck:
Read the full session notes here CFO Engagement: Finance Leaders in the Long Game
We hosted a CFO Engagement with finance leaders across the ecosystem. Key themes: deliberate AI adoption in recruiting, collections, and call centres, the best CFOs shifting from compliance to growth enablers and India-first strategies, non-dilutive structures, and India listings gaining real conviction. Narrowcast Edition 5: Destiny AvengedBlume Podcast Seasons metamorphosed into a Narrowcast edition: Destiny Avenged, written by Karthik B. Reddy, with Wyzr, collects eight founder stories from Razorpay, Sula, MakeMyTrip, Ather, Minimalist and others all built through rejection, bad timing and long stretches of disbelief before the market caught up. The book launched in airport bookstores and on Amazon, with Karthik doing his first ever signing at T2 Mumbai and two more at Crossword in Hyderabad over the last weekend of May.
Grab a copy at airport bookstores or on Amazon. That’s all for May. 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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