Nandan Nilekani steps down as GP at Fundamentum as it launches third $200M fund

Nandan Nilekani, the founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will no longer serve as a general partner at Fundamentum Partnership, the venture firm he founded nearly a decade ago.

Nilekani (pictured above) will step down as Fundamentum launches its third fund, which aims to raise around $200 million. He will be the fund’s lead investor, and continue to advise the advisory portfolio companies, founder Sanjeev Aggarwal told TechCrunch.

Aggarwal described the change as “just a matter of title,” and said Nilekani will continue to advise the company, the founders of the portfolio companies, and provide strategic direction. “He is an integral part of our firm. One thing he enjoys most is training the teams we return, and he will continue to do so at Fund III.”

Nilekani, 71, is one of India’s most recognized technology leaders. In addition to founding Infosys, he led the development of Aadhaar, India’s biometric identity system, and has been a leading advocate for 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 championed the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which is an initiative aimed at making e-commerce more open and collaborative in the country.

Nilekani started Fundamentum in 2017 with Aggarwal, who previously helped form 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 prayer app.

Nilekani did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The leadership change also expands Fundamentum’s 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 before Fund II; and chief financial officer Sanjay Chaturvedi, who has been with the company for almost a decade.

Fundamentum’s third fund aims to back eight to 10 startups building consumer technology, fintech, and AI products, and issue initial checks of about Rs 100 crore (about $10.5 million) each. The company has yet to announce the first close, but has already started sending capital, Aggarwal said, adding that he expects the fundraising to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months.

Fund III will see Nilekani make his largest 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 amount from international investors, with the remainder coming from Indian institutions, family offices, founders and partners of the firm.

That balance reflects how the Indian venture capital ecosystem has evolved over the past decade: Indian investors today play a much larger role in domestic capital 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 in the US,” Aggarwal said. “In the last five years, we have been experiencing a lot of interest from Indian investors to support real estate firms. […] Now you can build a company with domestic capital.”

Aggarwal told TechCrunch that Foundation sees the biggest opportunity for Indian AI in applications built on existing global models, particularly across financial services, content, and vernacular consumer applications.

This situation emphasizes how much India’s AI ecosystem is focused on application-layer startups rather than those that are still developing frontier AI models, unlike the US and China, where companies have attracted billions of dollars to build AI models.

The leadership change follows the departure of general partner Ashish Kumar, who recently launched an AI-focused fund, Fundumum Frontier Advisors (F2A), which also has Nilekani as a lead investor. F2A, Aggarwal said, is a separate firm with no active connection to Fundamentum, and Kumar is not involved in Fund III.

Fundamentum made 17 investments across its first two funds. Aggarwal told TechCrunch that the company has returned almost half of the capital from its first fund to investors, and the second fund is now focused on its next investment.