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Nandan Nilekani And Helion’s Sanjeev Aggarwal Float $100-Million Venture Capital Fund

The fund will lead investment rounds in the range of $10-25 million.



Infosys Technologies Chief Executive Nandan M Nilekani speaks to a reporter (Photographer: Amit Bhargava/Bloomberg News)
Infosys Technologies Chief Executive Nandan M Nilekani speaks to a reporter (Photographer: Amit Bhargava/Bloomberg News)
  • The platform will lead investment rounds in the range of $10-25 million.
  • The corpus may be extended to $200 million if the fund sees more opportunities.
  • The firm will focus on startups in consumer technology businesses.

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and former chief executive officer of Infosys, teamed up with Helion Venture Partners’ co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal to launch a $100-million fund.

Christened Fundamentum Partnership, the platform will lead investment rounds in the range of $10-25 million in companies looking for growth capital, according to a media statement. The corpus may be extended to $200 million if the fund sees more opportunities, the statement said.

The venture capital firm will focus on startups in consumer technology businesses, preferably India-centric and enterprise technology/outsourcing companies serving global corporations. Besides providing capital for growth, Nilekani and Aggarwal will leverage their experience in assisting portfolio founders in areas like leadership and organisation development and building scalable technology architecture.

The fund will not charge any management fee or carried interest.

Nilekani has so far made personal investments in the Indian startup ecosystem, backing companies like ShopX, RailYatri, angel investment platform LetsVenture, Sedemac and Power2SME. He will, however, now stop investing in a personal capacity.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at how Indian entrepreneurs identify original Indian problems and then solve these with application of technology. At Fundamentum, we are committed to building companies to last, with speed and at scale,” Nilekani said in the statement.

While at Helion, Aggarwal has backed companies like MakeMyTrip, ShopClues, BigBasket, among others. He will continue to actively manage Helion’s portfolio along with other co-founders.

Just last month, another Helion co-founder, Kanwaljit Singh, part-closed a Rs 300-crore fund.