Blume Ventures has partnered with two US-based funds, Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), and Emergent Ventures to launch B2B (business-to-business) accelerator platform-cum fund called Arka Venture Labs. This partnership is aimed at helping the cross-border growth of early-stage startups.
Arka Venture Labs, the accelerator platform-cum fund will be focused at investing exclusively in B2B startups in India to facilitate their global transition and faster growth. Nearly 40% of Blume Ventures portfolio already includes B2B startups, this partnership is set to increase this number.
It will be starting with an initial corpus of ₹40 crores ($6 million) with all the three firms anchoring the investment. With a successful first close, the fund has garnered interest from the three partner firms along with family offices, global HNIs which may see the corpus rise further.
Radhesh Kanumury, managing partner of Arka Venture Labs, also advisor to Blume Ventures, said, “Once startups in B2B space look at developed markets like the 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,”.
The startups in B2B space will receive seed and pre-seed capital of up to ₹1.3 crores ($200,000), along with mentorship, infrastructure, and access to the silicon valley ecosystem which will be helpful for the startups to gain some international exposure and access to global customers.
Arka Venture Labs will be looking to invest in tech-focused B2B startups that work in areas like retail, supply chain, robotics, deep technology, artificial intelligence, along with big data and analytics, among many others.
To receive investments from Arka Venture Labs, the startups will have to have a minimum viable product with a strong potential to scale in the US and European markets with the platform looking to complete the proof of concept within 6-9 months and have at least 1- paying clients.