Brand Capital

Brand Capital International will help strategically navigate your journey through India's large consumer base. As the strategic investment arm of Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd. (BCCL) and the Times Group, we're the largest media conglomerate in India. We are the thought leaders and experts on bringing new companies to the Indian market. With our deep domain expertise and insight into the Indian media landscape, we channel that knowledge into every investment we make -- giving our companies the ability to thrive in one of the world's fastest growing markets.

Night Capital is a $100MM growth equity investment company launched by Night, Inc. (“Night”), a multimedia talent management company who works with talent including Mr. Beast, Preston, and Safiya Nygaard, in conjunction with The Chernin Group ("TCG"), a multi-stage investment firm known for building and growing emerging consumer businesses in the media, commerce and technology industries. Night Capital is focused on acquiring majority interests in consumer-facing companies and building partnerships with relevant creators to drive future business growth. We are seeking an experienced associate or VP to join our team supporting transactions.

Working across media, consumer products and experiences, UTA Ventures both builds and invests in businesses. UTA Ventures works across the agency and with our clients, and partners with visionary founders to manifest their ideas, fuel their passion, and grow their companies via a wide variety of business models. Ventures is also the early stage investment arm of UTA, co-investing with leading venture firms into a dynamic portfolio of growing companies.

Bold. Brave. Brilliant. Brazen. The founders we back are all this, and more. They are unreasonable, they are crazy ambitious, obsessed with solving hard, gnarly problems. Problems whose solutions transform lives and impact society. And, it takes a revolutionary founder, and a transformational company to solve these problems, and effect change. We back these transformational companies, and their revolutionary founders early, and remain lifelong partners. How does Blume evaluate early stage startups? In our framework, we look at three criteria to evaluate startups – size of market or opportunity, team quality and finally, investability or probability of the next round of capital. Our approximate weightage for Opportunity : Team : Investability is 40 : 40 : 20. Let us double click on these three criteria. Market size or opportunity: Pick too small a market and even the best team can’t build a large scalable business. The best founders know how to reshape a market opportunity and build solutions to fit the largest of the market opportunities. That said, one has to begin with the aggregate opportunity being very large. For example, are Ola and Uber a ride hailing app or a large scale urban transportation business? The market size expands 5-10x when the latter is applied. At Blume, we try to find a portfolio balance between founders who can chase a large market opportunity domestically or build a tech-led differentiated product for global markets (which increase Founding teams: These are the most important variables for us or even most VCs at our stage. In every decision, once the other two factors are seen as a go, the clincher element in a yes/no decision boils down to the founding team – their expertise in solving for this space, as well as the integrity, mission, passion and persistence that one can gauge at this early stage of business. Investability or probability of next rounds of capital: The reality of how the later stage funding market is shaped to take risky bets in the ecosystem is important to consider while funding, especially in young and concentrated ecosystems like India, and that’s why we attribute 20% weightage to this element in India. We force ourselves to evaluate how much capital may be required to build to exitable scale and how challenging it is to raise that capital. As the funding ecosystem matures, we may shrink weightage of this in the future. Great founders overcome all of this but if we can select such that we have better odds at the starting point, why not? The above framework helps us shortlist but finally, it is a (increasingly improving) trained gut call that ends up building out the portfolio. What is Blume's investment criteria? Blume prefers ventures that have achieved some degree of customer validation, where the product is already launched in market and we are getting customer signups and feedback. We do make exceptions on the above for seasoned operators and second-time founders, but typically with first-time founders, we do not do idea stage or pre-MVP investments. If you are a B2B startup or an ecommerce / consumer transaction play, an annualised revenue rate (or revenues) of $375k (₹3cr) and above is a good milestone to reach out to us. If you are a marketplace startup, then reach out to us when you are nearing or have crossed a monthly GMV of ₹50 lacs a month. If you are a consumer app that isn't monetising yet, then ping us when you near or cross MAUs of 25k / DAUs of 5k. The above are broad guidelines, and not hard rules. We do make exceptions. If in doubt, reach out! How much does Blume invest? We are a seed / pre-Series A fund. While we are fairly flexible on the investment quantum, typically we have seen our investments range across from $1.5 to $3m (₹12 to 24 crs). We do optimise however for a stake of anywhere from 12 to 20%. These stake requirements reflect the depth and extent of support we provide to the startup – from fundraising and hiring to business development etc. We also anticipate the rounds of dilution that every successful startup will undergo, and the desired holding that we need to hold at the point of exit. Does Blume invest in international startups? We invest in startups that are Indian at heart or origin, but are willing to conquer the world market if needed to build scale. About a third of our portfolio is of this nature – taking Indian engineering skills to build products for global markets. Unfortunately, We DO NOT invest in startups that are international and have NO strong Indian connection / founders. We are also strong believers that to invest as a ‘generalist tech VC’ as we are, we need to be more and more focussed on a particular geography. We need to see as much of the available annual pipeline to know that we’ve truly picked 10 great founders / startups to invest in. We have no such advantage when we are looking outside the country; which is why we stay away from the temptation of looking at pipeline from international markets. What kind of sectors does Blume invest in? With our new Fund, our fourth since inception, we are looking to invest about 60-65% of the new fund in domestic-heavy sectors such as healthcare, financial services, commerce and brands, jobs and education, and digital media and gaming. The other 35-40% of the fund will focus on SaaS, and DeepTech (including CleanTech, manufacturing, blockchain) companies, typically in B2B, that can innovate and engineer with local talent pools, and yet scale globally. Does Blume have a preference between B2B and B2C? We like both. India is a consumer market that is poised to explode, as people move to the digital economy to spend an increasingly larger share of their wallet’s purchasing power. That makes it attractive to build a strong consumer proposition in India. And thus our B2C portfolio. We are also now very good at taking our science and engineering skills in software and other areas, and building commercial applications at scale, often for the global market. These constitute the majority of B2B ideas in our portfolio and we like this space a lot. Where do I send my pitch? How do I reach out to Blume? We get anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 ideas pitched to us annually, across the team, across all formats. This includes referrals, cold mails, DMs on social channels etc. We have given up counting :) We invest in about 10-12 of these per year. As Blume has grown, we've looked at the empirical data and discovered that the vast majority of our investments were referrals from our contacts in the ecosystem. You can count the exceptions to this rule with one hand in every cycle, and still have a few fingers to spare! These referrals come from our own founders we have backed, other founders who know that we will do right by their angel investments and our extensive set of friends, investors and well wishers in the ecosystem. The exceptions, while not impossible, are indeed rare. Ceteris paribus (all things considered), you are better off reaching us through a trusted common friend. In a highly networked startup ecosystem, it is not that hard to reach us through the strongest possible mutual connection. But if that is not possible, do reach out to us cold. Your email will certainly be read, even if it is not always responded to. We have ensured that our internal systems catch every pitch - cold or warm or hot. When writing in cold, a considered and researched mail (much like a quality college application) is the only way to attempt such a reach out. Please check out the team page, find the best person in the Investment team who has invested in and / or covers the sector you're building in. Do check out their social profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter) to access their contact info. Our email ids are not hard to guess as well! Preferably write to one person at a time, in the firm. The above are good principles for you irrespective of which firm you approach / pitch to. Nothing works better than a warm, referred introduction - it always gets the rightful attention. Please note that we have done away with a pitch form, or a common email id. From our experience, we found that the volume of inbound traffic was indeed high, but not always relevant, and thus almost impossible to assign a resource to just monitor these inbound gates.

Channel 4 Ventures (“C4V”) is a highly innovative corporate venture activity for Channel 4, which invests Channel 4’s airtime in return for minority stakes in early-stage companies (“media-for-equity”). Channel 4 Ventures provides an exciting opportunity for high-growth startups to access mass market audiences via premium marketing inventory (i.e. the spots between Bake-Off, Made in Chelsea, and Gogglebox) without dipping into cash reserves earmarked for competing development priorities. We are the leading media-for-equity fund in the UK and one of the few consumer-focused venture funds in the market with a truly unique proposition, clear value-add, and ambitious team. Since inception in 2015, C4V has completed 50+ investments in consumer growth companies, including Pinterest, Airtasker, Eve Sleep, Swyft, what3words, Strike, Cannaray, Crowdcube, Raylo, and Drover. C4V has invested alongside many prominent VC investors across the consumer ecosystem, such as Accel, Felix, Octopus, Balderton, Draper, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, Intel, Whole Foods & BP Ventures. Some of our successful exits via IPO include Eve Sleep, Pinterest, and Readly.

Established in 2006, with over $180 million under management, BDMI makes early stage investments into innovative companies in the tech and media landscape. ENTERPRISE NETWORK Drawing upon the global reach of parent company Bertelsmann, BDMI is a financially-driven corporate venture investor that brings a wealth of experience and opportunities to emerging companies. BDMI provides not only capital, but also brings access to a worldwide collection of diverse businesses within Bertelsmann and via our broader network of media, platform and tech connections. Our goal is to partner with companies that can benefit from our expertise and global perspective. TWO FUNDS BDMI invests out of two funds: a seed fund and a traditional early stage fund. For the seed fund, we typically prefer to see a product or service that is live in the marketplace with some initial data points that demonstrate early signs of product-market fit. We don’t usually lead seed stage investments, but prefer to join a syndicate with a lead already in place. FLEXIBLE INVESTING In BDMI’s main fund, we typically pursue Series A and Series B rounds with an initial investment of $500k to $10m plus reserves for follow-ons. We are comfortable leading an investment, co-leading or joining a syndicate with other strategic or financial investors. Depending upon the size of our investment, we usually hold voting board seats or observer seats. We invest in companies based in North America, Europe and Israel. Bertelsmann Bertelsmann is a media, services and education company that operates in about 50 countries around the world. It includes the entertainment group RTL Group, the trade book publisher Penguin Random House, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato Group, Bertelsmann Marketing Services, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds. The company has 165,000 employees worldwide and generated revenues of €20.2 billion in the 2022 financial year. Bertelsmann stands for creativity and entrepreneurship. This combination promotes first-class media content and innovative service solutions that inspire customers around the world. Bertelsmann aspires to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. RTL Group – Quality Entertainment on all Channels RTL Group is a leading entertainment company across broadcast, streaming, content and digital, with interests in 56 television channels, eight streaming services and 36 radio stations. The Group’s families of TV channels are either number one or number two in six European countries, while RTL Group owns or has interests in radio stations in France, Germany, Spain and Luxembourg. RTL Deutschland is the Group’s largest business unit and Germany’s first cross-media champion, operating across TV, streaming, radio, digital and publishing. RTL Group‘s streaming services include RTL+ in Germany and Hungary, Videoland in the Netherlands and 6play in France. Fremantle is one of the world’s largest creators, producers and distributors of scripted and unscripted content, responsible for more than 12,000 hours of programming per year, alongside an international network of teams operating in 27 countries. Bertelsmann is the majority shareholder of RTL Group, holding 75 percent of its shares. Penguin Random House – Number One in the World of Book Publishing Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher, is dedicated to its mission of nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere. The company employs more than 10,000 people globally. With more than 300 imprints and brands on six continents, Penguin Random House comprises adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital English-, German- and Spanish-language trade book publishing businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide. With over 16,000 new titles and more than 700 million print, audio and e-books sold annually, Penguin Random House’s publishing lists include more than 80 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors. Penguin Random House is wholly owned by Bertelsmann. BMG – Home for Songwriters and Artists in the Digital Age BMG – established in 2008 – is the world’s fourth-biggest music company, the first new global player in the music business of the streaming age, and a record label and music publisher in one. Named in 2020 as one of the world’s most innovative companies by Fast Company, BMG’s pitch is unique – a relentless focus on fairness, transparency and service to its artist and songwriter clients. BMG’s 22 offices across 13 core music markets now represent over 3 million songs and recordings, including many of the most renowned and successful catalogs in popular music history. BMG’s fresh approach includes production music, films, books, artist management, merchandise, neighboring rights and live as well as music publishing and recordings off the same service platform. With its multi-platform perspective, integrated technology platform and commitment to help artists maximize their income, BMG aims to be the best company in music to do business with. BMG is wholly owned by Bertelsmann. Arvato Group – One-Stop Everything Arvato Group is an internationally active service group that develops and implements customised solutions for various business processes for customers in diverse industries in more than 40 countries. The group's solution portfolio, which ranges from supply chain solutions (Arvato) and financial services (Riverty) to IT services (Arvato Systems), is used by globally renowned companies from a wide variety of industries – from telecommunications providers and energy suppliers to banks and insurance companies as well as e-commerce, IT and Internet providers. Arvato is wholly owned by Bertelsmann. The services business also includes the global customer experience company Majorel, which is listed on Euronext in Amsterdam and in which Bertelsmann holds a stake of around 40 percent. Bertelsmann Marketing Services – Powerful Marketing and Printing Expertise The Bertelsmann Marketing Services division is a cross-channel full-service provider for the advertising industry in which all of Bertelsmann’s direct marketing and print activities are bundled. Bertelsmann Marketing Services comprises four divisions: First, the German offset printers Mohn Media, GGP Media and Vogel Druck; second, the Book Printing Group in the United States, which consists of several offset and digital printers specializing in the production of books; third, the Digital Marketing Unit, which includes Germany’s leading content agency Territory, Campaign, the DeutschlandCard and the Dialog business; and fourth, the Sonopress Group, with the storage media producer Sonopress and the printing and packaging specialist Topac. Bertelsmann Marketing Services is wholly owned by Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann Education Group – Shaping Learning in the 21st Century Bertelsmann Education Group is home to leading providers of education and workforce management solutions. The group’s companies focus on the healthcare sector, in particular education and training, and deliver innovative ways of teaching and learning for students and professionals, and performance management solutions for organizations. Portfolio companies include the leading US continuing education and workforce management solution provider Relias, the professional practice-oriented Alliant University, Brazil’s number one medical education group Afya; and further venture fund investments. The Bertelsmann Education Group is wholly owned by Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann Investments – International Investment Platforms Bertelsmann Investments (BI) comprises Bertelsmann’s global venture capital activities as well as the Bertelsmann Next growth unit. The venture capital arm includes the Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI) funds, as well as selected fund and direct holdings in markets including Europe, the United States, Brazil, Southeast Asia and Africa. The Bertelsmann Next unit advances the entrepreneurial development of new growth sectors and business areas, including digital health, mobile gaming and HR Tech. To date, around €1.7 billion has been invested in more than 400 innovative companies and funds through Bertelsmann Investments. Bertelsmann Investments currently holds over 300 active investments worldwide through its network of start-ups and funds.