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IFC to back Nandan Nilekani, Helion co-founder Aggarwal’s Fundamentum fund

By TEAM VCC

  • 30 Mar 2018
IFC to back Nandan Nilekani, Helion co-founder Aggarwal’s Fundamentum fund
Credit: Thinkstock

International Finance Corporation plans to back the investment fund floated by Infosys Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Helion Ventures co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal.

The World Bank’s private-sector investment arm said in a disclosure on Friday that the Fundamentum Partnership–Fund I aims to raise $100 million to $125 million. It didn’t disclose the size of its proposed investment.

The disclosure comes just a day after La Caisse de dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), Canada’s second-biggest public pension fund, said it would initially pump in $20 million into Fundamentum’s debut fund.

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Fundamentum is a scale-up platform for mid-stage technology companies. The fund was registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India as a Category II alternative investment fund last year. It is extendable to $200 million. Category II funds include private equity funds.

The fund will invest in equity and equity-linked instruments in seven to 10 technology and technology-enabled companies, IFC said. The fund will look at companies across sectors such as health-tech, e-logistics, business-to-consumer niche retail and services platforms, business-to-business commerce platforms and enterprise software-as-a-service companies that leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence and internet of things technologies.

Nilekani has been an active investor, usually putting in $1-2 million in each startup. He has invested in firms across sectors, including aerospace startup Team Indus, telecom startup Mubble, publishing startup Juggernaut, online fundraising platform LetsVenture and logistics startup Fortigo.

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Aggarwal, who oversees a corpus of over $600 million at Helion Venture Partners, has backed MakeMyTrip, BigBasket and ShopClues. He was also the founder of a BPO firm, Daksh, which was acquired by IBM.

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