Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will no longer serve as a general partner at Fundamentum Partnership, the venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.
Nilekani (pictured above) will be stepping down from his role as Fundamentum launches its third fund, targeting to raise about $200 million. He will be the fund’s anchor investor, and continue advising the firm and mentoring portfolio companies, his co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal told TechCrunch.
Aggarwal described the shift as “just a title thing,” saying Nilekani would continue to advise the firm, mentor portfolio company founders, and provide strategic guidance. “He is an integral part of our firm. The one thing that he enjoys the most is mentoring the teams that we back, and he will continue to do so in Fund III.”
Nilekani, 71, is one of India’s best-known technology leaders. Besides co-founding Infosys, he led the creation of Aadhaar, India’s biometric identity system, and has been a leading advocate 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 has championed 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 build Helion Venture Partners. Fundamentum backs Indian startups at the Series B stage and later, and its portfolio includes used-car marketplace Spinny, online pharmacy PharmEasy, audio storytelling platform Kuku FM, and AppsForBharat, the developer of the Sri Mandir devotional app.
Nilekani did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The leadership change also broadens Fundamentum’s senior investment team. Alongside Aggarwal, Fund III will be led by Prateek Jain, who joined Fundamentum at its inception in 2017; fintech investor Mayank Kachhwaha, who joined ahead of Fund II; and finance chief Sanjay Chaturvedi, who has been with the firm for nearly a decade.
Fundamentum’s third fund aims to back eight to 10 early-stage startups building consumer technology, fintech, and AI products, and issue initial checks of about ₹100 crore (around $10.5 million) each. The firm has yet to announce a first close, but has already begun deploying capital, Aggarwal said, adding that he expects the fundraising to conclude over the next 12 to 18 months.
Fund III will see Nilekani making his largest-ever commitment to a venture capital fund, Aggarwal said, though he declined to disclose the investment amount. The fund, Aggarwal said, expects to raise roughly half of its target from international investors, and the remainder from Indian institutions, family offices, founders, and the firm’s partners.
That balance reflects how India’s venture capital ecosystem has evolved over the past decade: Indian investors today play a much larger role in domestic funds than they did when Aggarwal helped launch Helion Venture Partners in the mid-2000s.
“When we launched Helion, there was no domestic capital in the country, and all the capital was raised from the U.S.,” Aggarwal said. “Over the last five years, we are experiencing very strong interest in Indian investors to back venture capital firms […] Now you can build a venture firm with domestic capital.”
Aggarwal told TechCrunch that Fundamentum sees India’s biggest AI opportunity in applications that are built on existing global models, particularly across financial services, content, and vernacular consumer applications.
The stance underscores how much of India’s AI ecosystem centers on application-layer startups rather than those developing frontier AI models, unlike the U.S. 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 firm with no operational connection to Fundamentum, and Kumar is not involved in Fund III.
Fundamentum has made 17 investments across its first two funds. Aggarwal told TechCrunch the firm 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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