KARTHIK REDDY

Reddy is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee, IIM Bangalore, and the Wharton School. He worked at American Express, Reuters Instinet, and the Times of India Group, spanning finance, tech, and media across the US and India.

His turning point came in 2007 as a vice president for Brand Capital at the Times Group, where he invested in startups through angel networks and spotted a giant hole in the market. In 2010 he co-founded Blume Ventures with Sanjay Nath, whom he met through Mumbai Angels.

Blume became the first Indian VC to raise its entire debut fund from domestic investors. Over 15 years the firm has backed more than 175 startups across four funds and is now deploying Fund V.

Reddy also chaired the executive committee of the IVCA, India's main venture and private equity association, from 2022 to 2024.

Blume Ventures (co-founder and managing partner)

Reddy is an early-stage investor, which means he backs startups when they are barely more than an idea. He likes being close to what he calls the zero-to-one journey, the messy stretch when a company is figuring out if it even works.

He is patient, happy to watch and grow with founders even when he is not fully convinced yet. He backs two kinds of founders: those solving uniquely Indian problems and those building global products from India.

And he genuinely means the long-hold pitch, saying Blume likes to stay with a founder until the IPO baton has passed.

Blume's early bet on Unacademy, the online education giant, is one of its headline wins, part of a portfolio of more than 175 startups built from scratch. But Reddy's real win is bigger than any single company.

He helped prove that a homegrown Indian VC could raise domestic money and back local founders, at a time when almost all the capital came from abroad. Growing Blume to over $900 million in assets across five funds, starting from a gap nobody else was filling, is the achievement that defines him.

Reddy is unusually honest about the collective miss of his industry. He has said that for the first five to seven years, Indian VC was faking it, selling the idea that it could simply copy what the US and China had done.

That imported playbook did not fully fit India, and plenty of early bets and assumptions did not pan out. The lesson he draws is that India had to find its own model, built around its own micro-entrepreneur economy, rather than borrowing someone else's.

Backing more than 175 startups also means plenty that did not survive, which is the nature of seed investing.

Reddy believes the money is made by being early and staying loyal, not by chasing hot rounds. He preaches conviction in founders over quick flips, and he is proud that Blume sticks around from seed to IPO.

He is blunt about the games that hurt founders, once calling IPO price optimization a silly exercise that leaves the founder holding the bag. He believes in building India's startup ecosystem for the long haul, and he is candid that it took the industry 15 years to stop pretending and start delivering.

He also thinks India's best companies will increasingly compete globally, not just at home.

Reddy keeps his personal and family life out of the public eye. What is well documented is his professional partnership with Blume co-founder Sanjay Nath, whom he met through the Mumbai Angels network.

He is based in India, where Blume does most of its investing.

Reddy stacked three heavyweight schools: IIT Roorkee for engineering, IIM Bangalore for management, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for business. That combination of technical, managerial, and financial training is rare even among top investors.

It gave him credibility with both founders and the institutions he later raised money from.