Nandan Nilekani leaves general partner role at Fundamentum as it launches third $200M fund

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will no longer serve as general partner at Infosys. Essential partnershipthe venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.

Nilekani (pictured above) will step down when Fundamentum launches its third fund, which aims to raise around $200 million. He will be the lead investor in the fund, and will continue to advise the company and guide portfolio companies, Sanjeev Agarwal, its co-founder, told TechCrunch.

Describing this transformation as “just a title,” Agarwal said Nilekani would continue to advise the company, mentor company founders, and provide strategic direction. “He is an integral part of our company. The only thing he enjoys most is directing the teams we support, and he will continue to do that at Fund III.”

Nilekani, 71 years old, is one of India’s most famous technology leaders. Besides co-founding Infosys, he led the creation of… AadhaarIndia’s biometric identity system, and has been a leading advocate for the country’s digital public infrastructure, including… Unified Payments Interface (UPI)a real-time payments network used by hundreds of millions of Indians. He defended Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)an initiative aimed at making e-commerce more open and interoperable in the country.

Give up He started Fundamentum in 2017 with Aggarwal, who previously helped build Helion Venture Partners. Fundamentum supports Indian startups at the Series B stage and beyond, and its portfolio includes the used car market barbedOnline pharmacy PharmacyAn audio storytelling platform Coco FMand AppsForBharatdeveloper Sri Mandir devotional app.

Nilekani did not respond to an email request for comment.

The leadership change also expands Fundamentum’s senior investment team. Along with Aggarwal, the third fund will be led by Pratik Jain, who joined Fundamentum at its inception in 2017; fintech investor Mayank Kachwaha, who joined ahead of the second fund; and CFO Sanjay Chaturvedi, who has been with the company for nearly a decade.

The third Fundamentum aims to back eight to ten early-stage startups building consumer technology, fintech and AI products, issuing seed checks worth around Rs 100 crore (about $10.5 million) each. The company has not yet announced the first close, but has already started deploying capital, Agarwal said, adding that he expects the fundraising to conclude in the next 12 to 18 months.

The third fund will see Nilekani make his largest-ever commitment to a venture capital fund, Aggarwal said, though he declined to disclose the investment amount. The fund expects to raise about half of its target from international investors, with the rest from Indian institutions, family offices, founders and corporate partners, Aggarwal said.

This balance reflects how India’s venture capital ecosystem has evolved over the past decade: Indian investors today play a much larger role in domestic funds than they did when Aggarwal helped launch Helion Venture Partners in the mid-2000s.

“When we launched Helion, there was no local capital in the country, and all the capital was raised from the US,” Agarwal said. “Over the past five years, we have been seeing very strong interest from Indian investors to back venture capital firms (…) Now you can build a venture firm with local capital.”

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

This situation underscores how focused India’s AI ecosystem is on startups at the application layer Rather than those developing frontier AI modelsUnlike the United States and China, where companies have attracted billions of dollars to build AI models.

The reshuffle comes in the wake of the recent departure of General Partner Ashish Kumar Fired AI-focused venture fund Fundamentum Frontier Advisors (F2A), which also includes Nilekani as a lead investor. F2A is a separate company with no operational connection to Fundamentum, and Kumar was not involved in Fund III, Aggarwal said.

Fundamentum has made 17 investments in its first two funds. The company has returned about half of the capital from its first fund to investors, Aggarwal told TechCrunch The second box He is now focusing on pursuing investments.