Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani and Helion Venture’s Sanjeev Aggarwal have launched an investment fund with a corpus of $100 million to back startups.
According to a report in the Economic Times, The fund will be called Fundamentum and Nilkeni will stop making investments in his personal capacity and will only invest through Fundamentum.
One-third of the corpus will come from Nilekani and Aggarwal and will also see participation from leading entrepreneurs from the country as well as financial institutions and HNIs, some from overseas.
ET reports that the corpus may be extended to $200 million if the fund sees more opportunities.
“I have been doing investments for the last few years, and I have understood the ecosystem. The one thing I realized is that the real challenge is in scaling up,” Nilekani told ET.
He further added that Fundamentum will offer more than just capital and provide a 360 degree approach from its team of advisors.
Fundamentum will invest in only about two to three startups in a year, ranging from $10 million to $25 million. It will focus on startups operating in the consumer tech space as well as enterprise technology serving global companies.
The fund will not invest in sectors such as financial technology and education technology, Nilekani told ET, citing conflict with his philanthropic and other activities.
“In edutech I do only philanthropy, through Ekstep and other channels. In fintech, since I am an advisor to NPCI, I don’t want any conflict of interest in payments. We will also not look at Aadhar-based or India-Stack-based tech companies,” he added.
Fundamentum has already brought on board about six entrepreneurs to invest in the fund.
“It will include entrepreneurs who have built unicorns and decacorns. Many of them are already investors,” Sanjeev told ET without disclosing names.
Entreprenuer Ashish Kumar and Prateek Jain, who had founded StayGlad (acquired by Quikr) have joined as partners on investment team.