Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will no longer be a general partner at Fundamentum Partnershipthe venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.
Nilekani (pictured above) will step down from his role as Fundamentum launches its third fund, aiming to raise around $200 million. He will be the lead investor in the fund and will continue to advise the firm and guide portfolio companies, co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal told TechCrunch.
Aggarwal described the shift as “just a matter of title,” saying Nilekani will continue to advise the company, mentor portfolio company founders and provide strategic guidance. “He is an integral part of our company. The one thing he enjoys most is leading the teams we support, and he will continue to do so at Fund III.”
Nilekani, 71, is one of India’s best-known technology leaders. In addition to co-founding Infosys, he led the creation of Aadhaar, India’s biometric identity system, and has been a leading proponent of the country’s digital public infrastructure, including the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payments network used by hundreds of millions of Indians. He supported the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an initiative aimed at making e-commerce more open and interoperable in the country.
Nilekani started Fundamentum in 2017 with Aggarwal, who previously helped found Helion Venture Partners. Fundamentum backs Indian startups at the Series B stage and beyond, and its portfolio includes used car marketplace Spinny, online pharmacy PharmEasy, audio storytelling platform Kuku FM and AppsForBharat, developer of the Sri Mandir devotional app.
Nilekani did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The leadership change also expands Fundamentum’s senior investment team. Along with Aggarwal, Fund III will be led by Prateek Jain, who joined Fundamentum since its inception in 2017. Fintech investor Mayank Kachhwaha, who joined before Fund II. and CFO Sanjay Chaturvedi, who has been with the company for nearly a decade.
Fundamentum’s third fund aims to back eight to 10 early-stage startups building consumer tech, fintech and artificial intelligence products and issue seed checks of about ₹100 crore (about $10.5 million) each. The company has yet to announce the first close, but has already started raising funds, Aggarwal said, adding that he expects the fundraising to be completed within the next 12 to 18 months.
Fund III will see Nilekani make his largest-ever commitment to a venture capital fund, Aggarwal said, though he declined to disclose the amount of the investment. The fund, Aggarwal said, expects to raise about half of its target from international investors and the rest from Indian foundations, family offices, founders and partners of the company.
That balance reflects the way India’s venture capital ecosystem has evolved over the past decade: Indian investors today play a much bigger role in domestic capital than when Aggarwal helped launch Helion Venture Partners in the mid-2000s.
“When we started Helion, there was no domestic capital in the country and all the capital was raised from the US,” said Aggarwal. “Over the past five years, we have been experiencing very strong interest for Indian investors to back venture capital firms […] Now you can create a venture capital company with domestic capital.’
Aggarwal told TechCrunch that Fundamentum sees India’s biggest AI opportunity in applications based on existing global models, particularly in financial services, content and consumer public applications.
The move underscores how much of India’s AI ecosystem is focused on application-level startups rather than those developing frontier AI models, unlike in the US and China, where companies have attracted billions of dollars to build AI models.
The leadership reshuffle follows the departure of general partner Ashish Kumar, who recently launched AI-focused venture fund Fundamentum Frontier Advisors (F2A), which also has Nilekani as an anchor investor. F2A, Aggarwal said, is a separate company with no operational connection to Fundamentum, and Kumar is not involved in Fund III.
Fundamentum made 17 investments in its first two funds. Aggarwal told TechCrunch that the company has returned about half of the capital from its first fund to investors, and the second fund is now focused on follow-on investments.
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