Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will now serve as general partner of Fundamentum Partnership, the venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.
Nairkhani (pictured above) will step down from his role as Fundamentum launches its third fund, which aims to raise about $200 million. He will become the fund’s anchor investor and continue to advise the company and guide its portfolio companies, co-founder Sanjeev Agarwal told TechCrunch.
Agarwal described the shift as “purely in title” and said Nairkani will continue to advise the company, mentor founders of portfolio companies and provide strategic guidance. “He is an integral part of our company. One of the things he enjoys most is coaching the teams we support, and he will continue to do so at Fund III.”
Nil Khani, 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 is a leading advocate for India’s digital public infrastructure, including 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 founded Fundamentum in 2017 with Aggarwal, who previously helped build Helion Venture Partners. Fundamentum has backed Indian startups from Series B stage onwards and its portfolio includes used car marketplace Spinny, online pharmacy PharmEasy, audio storytelling platform Kuku FM and Sri Mandir devotional app developer AppsForBharat.
Nilekani did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The leadership change also expands the size of Fundamentum’s senior investment team. Alongside Agarwal, Fund III will be led by Prateek Jain, who joined Fundamentum when it was founded in 2017. Fintech investor Mayank Kachwaha was an early participant in Fund II. and Finance Director Sanjay Chaturvedi, who has been with the company for nearly 10 years.
Fundamentum’s third fund aims to back eight to 10 early-stage startups developing consumer technology, fintech and AI products, with first checks of approximately 100 million rupees (approximately $10.5 million) each. Agarwal said the company has not yet announced its first round of funding, but has already started injecting capital, adding that he expects the round to close within the next 12 to 18 months.
Fund III will mark Nilekani’s largest investment ever in a venture capital fund, Agarwal said, but declined to disclose the investment amount. Agarwal said the fund will raise about half of its target amount from international investors and the rest from Indian institutions, family offices, founders and the firm’s partners.
This balance reflects how India’s venture capital ecosystem has evolved over the past decade. Indian investors today play a much bigger role in domestic funds than they did when Mr. Agarwal 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,” Agarwal said. “Over the past five years, we have experienced that Indian investors have a very strong interest in backing venture capital companies (…) You can now set up venture companies with domestic capital.”
Agarwal told TechCrunch that Fundamentum sees India’s biggest AI opportunities in applications built on existing global models, particularly financial services, content and national consumer applications.
This stance highlights that unlike in the US and China, where companies are amassing billions of dollars to build AI models, much of India’s AI ecosystem is centered around application layer startups rather than companies developing frontier AI models.
The leadership change follows the departure of general partner Ashish Kumar, who recently launched an AI-focused venture fund, Fundamentum Frontier Advisors (F2A), which also has Nilekani as an anchor investor. Agarwal said F2A is a separate company and has no operational ties to Fundamentum, and Kumar is not involved in Fund III.
Fundamentum has made 17 investments across its first two funds. Agarwal told TechCrunch that the company has returned about half of the capital from the first fund to investors, and the second fund is currently focused on follow-on investments.
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