NILEKANI, AGGARWAL LAUNCH $100-MN VENTURE FUND
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and venture capitalist Sanjeev Aggarwal have launched a $100-million venture fund to back mid-stage start-ups that solve unique Indian problems in the consumer technology space.
While Nilekani is looking to back companies that target India’s domestic economy, he also senses opportunities in backing enterprise technology firms and outsourcing companies that serve global corporations — a model Infosys helped pioneer to become India’s second-largest software exporter.
The venture, which has been dubbed “The Fundamentum Partnership”, will look to lead investment rounds of $10 million to $25 million. It will have an initial corpus of $100 million and will be extended to $200 million if opportunities come along.
Until now, Nilekani has only been an angel investor in start-ups such as ShopX, RailYatri, Sedemac and Power2SME, pumping in small tokens of his personal wealth and mentoring founders. With Fundamentum, Nilekani will institutionalise his investments through a venture capital firm.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at how Indian entrepreneurs identify original Indian problems and then solve them with application of technology. India continues to be blessed with phenomenal entrepreneurial talent and the attempt with this platform will be to see how we can amplify their success,” Nilekani said.
Fundamentum will not only attract personal investments from Nilekani and Aggarwal, who is a co-founder of Helion Ventures, but capital will also be contributed by a set of institutional investors.