Bridgestone India partners with Blume Ventures to leverage start-up ecosystem in mobility solution space

Blume Ventures backs entrepreneurs who are either building to solve large impactful problems in India or taking the best of Indian innovation to global markets.

It works with early-stage startups in the fields of EdTech, FinTech, Health, Commerce and Consumer internet in the former to Deep-Tech, AI to SaaS and enterprise software in the latter category.

Bridgestone said the collaboration is in line with its interest in creating a vibrant mobility solutions space in India.

Parag Satpute, Managing Director of Bridgestone India said,“The corporate venture partnership will allow us to accelerate our strategy of exploring new and disruptive models in the mobility eco-system. As a partner, Bridgestone brings its global leadership position to the Indian market and to India’s growing start-up space.”

Sanjay Nath, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures said “We are grateful to our anchor supporters who have emphatically backed Blume. Whether building domestically or for global markets, the best founders and LPs would like to work with a Fund that can be considered world-class, which has spurred us to keep institutionalizing and bolstering our platform, team and capabilities.

“Thanks to an increasing reality of IPO and M&A exits, there is a huge resurgence of founders and operators. We’re excited for Blume to become the preferred seed partner of choice for both these categories.”

In order to enhance mobility solutions, in 2020, Bridgestone India invested in Fleeca India Pvt. Ltd. a start-up that provides solutions to Fleet Operators to increase efficiencies of their tyre usage.

In April 2022, the company inaugurated a first-of-its-kind Mobility Solutions Institute in India that will enable stakeholders to enhance their knowledge of tyre technology and related mobility solutions.

These solutions include smart sensing tyres that capture and transmit critical data on the health of the tyre.

In the last few years, Bridgestone has invested in its Digital Garage, an open innovation platform, where it has built new capabilities in data collection from sensors and RFiD, platforms and analytics.