Nandan Nilekani makes his biggest-ever VC bet with a new Rs 2,200 crore fund

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has made his largest-ever commitment to a venture capital firm, anchoring the newly launched third fund of Fundamentum Partnership, the growth-stage investment firm he co-founded with entrepreneur-investor Sanjeev Aggarwal in 2017.

The fund is targeting a corpus of Rs 2,200 crore, including a Rs 400 crore greenshoe option, and will continue Fundamentum’s focus on Series B investments in Indian technology companies — the stage at which startups have typically moved past early product-market fit and require larger capital pools to scale further.

“India’s Series B moment is now,” said Mayank Kachhwaha, general partner at Fundamentum, noting that growth in India’s early-stage funding ecosystem has created a far larger pipeline of companies ready for this kind of capital. The fund plans to write initial cheques of Rs 100 crore to Rs 150 crore in exchange for 10-15% stakes, targeting eight to 10 investments, with a first close expected in three to six months.

Consumer technology, fintech, and AI-native or AI-enabled businesses will be the fund’s primary focus areas, with Kachhwaha estimating roughly 80% of the corpus will go toward consumer and fintech startups. Fundamentum’s existing portfolio spans companies including Spinny, PharmEasy, Kuku, AppsForBharat and FlexiLoans, and its second fund, which closed above $200 million in 2022, has delivered a gross internal rate of return of 26% to date.

The launch also marks a leadership shift at the firm, with general partners Aggarwal, Prateek Jain, Kachhwaha and Sanjay Chaturvedi taking on greater responsibility for Fund III, even as Nilekani continues to anchor the firm as its largest limited partner.