EP#55 Sanjay Nath – The journey from a fund manager to a firm manager, the platform approach of supporting founders and building an enduring VC brand

The VCpreneur: Startups | Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Fundraising

In this episode, Sanjay Nath (Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Blume Ventures), joins our host Digjay, to talk about his path leading up to Blume Ventures, the genesis of Blume to build an institutional seed stage fund, challenges faced as a first time fund manager, change in investment & hiring strategy with a growing fund size, the platform and community approach of supporting founders, building a strong VC brand, identifying founders that can build global companies from India, his learnings from a decadal career in VC and more.

Founded in 2010, Blume is one of India's leading early-stage venture funds with more than $200 million in assets under management (AUM) across multiple funds & over 150 investments that includes startups like Unacademy, Yulu, Dunzo, Slice, ClassPlus, Ultrahuman, GreyOrange Robotics, Dataweave, Locus, Tricog, Lambdatest, Nektar.ai amongst others.

Prior to Blume, Sanjay was based in the Silicon valley where he held consulting and management roles at Sun Microsystems, PwC and IBM Global Services. An alum of BITS Pilani and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Sanjay got his start in venture capital as an angel investor with Mumbai Angels where he invested in startups like InMobi, LittleEye Labs (acquired by Facebook) and others. You can connect with him here on Linkedin or Twitter.

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Show notes –

1. (02:02) Sanjay’s background & path leading up to Blume
2. (03:45) The genesis of Blume Ventures; Building an institutional fund to invest in seed stage startups
3. (06:09) Challenges faced when launching Fund I
4. (10:02) Change in investment & hiring strategy with a growing fund size
5. (15:55) The platform and community approach of supporting founders
6. (18:59) Building a strong brand as a VC firm
7. (20:20) Sectors that are likely to be global offshoots from India
8. (22:02) Key traits of founders that have the capability to build global companies from India
9. (30:14) Learnings from a decadal career in VC
10. (33:14) How has being a VC influenced Sanjay’s personality over the years?
11. (36:42) Rapid fire and closing remarks

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