Micro VC

Also called Nano Fund and Micro Fund

A small venture fund, often under 50 million dollars, that writes early cheques and typically leads or co-leads pre-seed and seed rounds. Sometimes run by one or two partners.

Why it matters

Micro VCs fill the gap between angels and big funds, and they can move fast and take a bet a large fund would skip. For an early founder they are often the most reachable institutional money.

For example

A two-partner micro VC with a 40 crore fund leads a startup's seed with a 3 crore cheque, moving faster than a large fund would.

Worth your time

India's Micro VC Landscape: Who's Writing the First Cheque in 2026? Blume Ventures · article This is the plain map of the Indian investor ladder from the fund that helped build it. Blume defines a micro VC as a sub-$40M fund writing $100K to $500K first cheques, and shows there are now 100+ of them (most born in 2022 to 2023) sitting exactly in the gap between an angel's ₹8 lakh to ₹80 lakh personal cheque and a large seed fund's process. If you want to know who actually writes the first institutional cheque in India and how big it is, this is the source, not a US explainer with dollar figures that do not map to your round. Open blume.vc

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