Inside BlackSoil’s supply chain financing; BlueHill VC’s deeptech playbook

Hello,

Money flows where it has a purpose.

IIT Madras-incubated enterprise AI firm Uniphore has secured $260 million, co-led by tech firms NVIDIA, AMD, Snowflake, and Databricks. It plans to grow its data platform, Business AI Cloud, which enables businesses to automate processes, analyse data, and enhance customer interactions.

This funding follows a familiar trend, with AI startups on track to capture over 50% of global VC funding in 2025, according to a CB Insights report.

However, the AI race and the ‘tangle of AI deals’ have fuelled fears of a bubble in the US equity markets, signalling dangerous overinvestment in the developing technology. Some note that the misallocation of capital could be 17x bigger than the dot-com bubble.

Such fears of an AI bubble prompted Meta to lay off 600 employees in its AI unit. Notably, these job cuts do not affect Meta’s newest hires tasked with developing ‘personal superintelligence’—a form of AI that would surpass humans on essentially all cognitive tasks. 

These are murky waters, and even AI godfathers can’t shake off the doomsday feeling. Hundreds of public figures, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson, have called for a pause in the development of superintelligence, warning of human economic obsolescence.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Inside SaralSCF’s lending model
• BlueHill VC’s deeptech playbook
• Misfits serving “soda pop” moments

Here’s your trivia for today: What is the flattest country in the world?

Fintech

Inside SaralSCF’s lending model

When you ask Gaurav Bagrodia, President of SaralSCF—the supply chain arm of BlackSoil Group—what’s behind the company’s brisk growth, he doesn’t boast grand strategy. “Lending is lending,” he says, almost dismissively.

While supply chain finance has existed in India for decades—companies like SBI Factors have been offering it to blue-chip clients like Mondelez and Pepsi since the 1980s—it remained largely inaccessible to unrated or low-rated companies. That’s the middle ground SaralSCF set out to capture in 2021.

Standing apart:

• The appetite for supply chain financing from emerging startups is clearly reflected on the firm’s balance sheet. Assets under management (AUM) have climbed from Rs 50–60 crore in March 2023 to roughly Rs 170 crore a year later, and up to Rs 344 crore by March 2025.
• SaralSCF was born as BlackSoil’s risk-diversification experiment. “We wanted to diversify both the product and the risk. So we acquired a company, built our own tech stack,” Bagrodia explains.
• The company is experimenting with AI and ML for credit scorecards and rule engines, but Bagrodia is cautious. “Currently, the product and industry are not ready... Data is not that highly available.”

Funding Alert

Startup: Uniphore

Amount: $260M

Round: Series F

Startup: Wonderland Foods

Amount: Rs 140 Cr

Round: Institutional

Startup: Megaliter Varunaa

Amount: Rs 15 Cr

Round: Seed

Investor

BlueHill VC’s deeptech playbook

BlueHill VC is in the midst of raising its maiden fund with a target corpus of Rs 350 crore and a green shoe option of Rs 50 crore. The Chennai-based early-stage VC is looking to back companies building foundational technology in engineering and sciences, focusing on intellectual property. 

In a conversation with YourStory, BlueHill’s Managing Partner, Manu Iyer, said, “We are looking to back companies building this tech from the ground up, not companies that are, let’s say, copying something that exists in the West, but, saying, ‘I can do it cheaper’... We are looking to back founders changing the paradigm of how certain things are done. And broadly, that is the thesis of our fund.”

Key takeaways:

• BlueHill VC has invested in Hyderabad-based startup Helex, which is developing advanced therapeutics for the needs of patients with genetic kidney diseases. While the investment remains undisclosed, initial cheque sizes are about $1 million per company, and follow-on investments range between $2–4 million.
• It is investing about $3 million in space tech startup EtherealX’s upcoming $20 million round, which, according to Iyer, is happening at 4.5X markup for the VC firm. 
• BlueHill will look to invest about $1 million each in 15–20 companies and make follow-on investments in about 7 or 8 companies, Managing Partner Sridhar Parthasarathi told YourStory.

Startup

Misfits serving “soda pop” moments 

Founded by Aditya and Yash Pai, D2C brand Misfits is betting on bold flavours and gut-friendly benefits to win over a new generation of health-conscious consumers. Instead of sticking to predictable cola, apple, lemon, or orange, the startup debuted with two distinctive flavours. 

Grape Soda was inspired by an episode of The Office, while Mango Chilli was designed for the Indian palate by pairing Alphonso mango with a kick of spice. 

News & updates

• Bikes: Hero MotoCorp will enter the UK market with a partnership with Lancashire-based distributor MotoGB, making the company’s products available in 51 countries. Through the partnership, Hero will sell its Euro 5+ compliant Hunk 440 motorcycle in the UK, priced at $4,650.
• Gaming: Amazon unveiled its revamped game streaming service, Amazon Luna, which now includes new beginner-friendly multiplayer games that can be controlled with your phone. 
• Forfeit: US Google users who won a $425 million jury verdict in a consumer privacy class action have asked a federal judge to force the Alphabet unit to forfeit an additional $2.36 billion. The jury found that it secretly collected app activity data from millions of users who had disabled an account tracking feature.

What is the flattest country in the world?

Answer: Maldives, with an average elevation of only 1.5 metres. 

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