Technology billionaire Nandan Nilekani, who spearheaded the Aadhaar project, has partnered with venture capitalist Sanjeev Aggarwal, founder of the BPO Daksh, to set up a fund with an initial corpus of $100 million. Called ‘The Fundamentum Partnership’, it would lead investments ranging from $10 million to $25 million in young ventures. They will back local champions focusing on consumer technology businesses, particularly ventures solving unique Indian problems. The corpus will be expanded to $200 million if good opportunities come along.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at how Indian entrepreneurs identify original Indian problems and then solve these with the application of technology,” said Mr. Nilekani. India continues to be blessed with phenomenal entrepreneurial talent and this platform will attempt to amplify their success. “At Fundamentum, we are committed to building companies to last, with speed and at scale,” said Mr. Nilekani, who has made personal investments in ShopX, RailYatri and Sedemac.
Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder of venture capital firm Helion, said that while India has earned recognition as a startup nation, it is as yet an unproven scale up nation. “Ten years ago, with Helion, the attempt was to participate in creating a ‘startup’ ecosystem in India. With Fundamentum, we want to help build a much needed ‘scale up’ ecosystem in the country,” he said.
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