Nandan Nilekani-Floated Fundamentum Raises $227 Million For Investing In Startups

Fundamentum Partnership, floated by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Helion Ventures co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal, on Friday said it has raised $227 million to invest in early-growth stage Indian start-ups. The fund will support 4-5 startups each year and plans to lead or co-lead $25-40 million rounds.

“We have raised $227 million for our Fund 2 which we will invest in early-growth stage Indian start-ups. Fundamentum plans to fund enterprises that have attained product-market fit and have developed momentum in their scale-up journey,” the company said in a tweet.

Founded in 2017, Fundamentum is a homegrown scale-up fund building enduring technology companies.

Fundamentum in a statement said it will fund enterprises that have attained product-market fit and developed momentum in their scale-up journey. The company will focus on tech-driven enterprises in the consumer internet and enterprise software space in India and will back entrepreneurs based out of the country.

Nilekani, co-founder and general partner at Fundamentum Partnership, said, “Digital acceleration, brought on by the pandemic, has dramatically increased technology spending across the world. India has all the ingredients in place—capital, entrepreneurs, stories of success, and liquidity. In this decade, we will see entrepreneurs making a material impact on the country at scale as the digital intensity of society increases.”

In a tweet on Friday, he said, “Delighted to share that @FundamentumVC has launched its second fund, raised $227 million. We now intend to go deeper into our investment program, focus on entrepreneurs creating built-to-last companies out of India, and steadfastly support them in their exciting journeys!”

Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder and general partner also said in the statement that the second fund is significantly oversubscribed. “We plan to continue the same strategy as used in Fund I – investing in tech driven enterprises from India. A strengthened team and focus on emerging sectors such as Bharat Apps, SaaS and Clean-tech, among others, will enable us to propel growth of our investee firms.”

According to a report by Grant Thornton Bharat released on Friday, the PE (private equity) landscape in India during July saw 139 deals valued at $1.7 billion. While PE transactions continued to account for over 80 per cent of overall deal activity, deal values witnessed a significant decline. The decline in funding was largely due to the absence of large investments and higher volume of deals in the early-stage category, resulting in lower value per deal.

The year-to-date PE investments witnessed record activity both in terms of volumes and values with 29 per cent and 3 per cent from the previous record, respectively. The start-up sector continued to drive the PE deal volumes for July 2022 with a 70 per cent share of volumes, with investment values of $0.6 billion. The retail tech segment led the investment volumes in the start-up sector with 20 per cent deals, followed by enterprise application and infrastructure and fintech at 18 per cent each.

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