Nandan Nilekani, the renowned co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, has stepped down from his role as a general partner at Fundamentum Partnership, the venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.
Source: techcrunch.com
Nilekani, 71, will continue to be an integral part of the firm, albeit in a different capacity. He will be the anchor investor for Fundamentum’s third fund, which is targeting to raise about $200 million. As the fund’s anchor investor, Nilekani will make his largest-ever commitment to a venture capital fund.
Sanjeev Aggarwal, Nilekani’s co-founder at Fundamentum, described the shift as ‘just a title thing.’ According to Aggarwal, Nilekani will continue to advise the firm, mentor portfolio company founders, and provide strategic guidance. ‘He is an integral part of our firm,’ Aggarwal said. ‘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’s decision to step down from his GP role comes as Fundamentum launches its third fund. The firm has a strong track record of backing Indian startups at the Series B stage and later. 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.
Fundamentum’s third fund aims to back eight to 10 early-stage startups building consumer technology, fintech, and AI products. The firm expects to issue initial checks of about ₹100 crore (around $10.5 million) each. Although Fundamentum has yet to announce a first close, the firm has already begun deploying capital.
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 is expected to raise roughly half of its target from international investors, and the remainder from Indian institutions, family offices, founders, and the firm’s partners. This 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.
According to Aggarwal, ‘when we launched Helion, there was no domestic capital in the country, and all the capital was raised from the U.S.’ However, over the last five years, there has been a significant increase in interest from Indian investors to back venture capital firms. ‘Now you can build a venture firm with domestic capital,’ Aggarwal said.
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. This 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). Although Nilekani is an anchor investor in F2A, Aggarwal emphasized that it 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 that 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.
