The Fundamentum Partnership

Sanjeev Aggarwal serves as Managing Partner and runs day-to-day investment decisions alongside Partner Ashish Kumar. Nandan Nilekani, as co-founder and anchor LP, is involved in strategic direction and final investment committee approvals. The investment committee is deliberately small, given the concentrated portfolio strategy.

The firm sources heavily through Nandan Nilekani's network, which spans the Indian technology ecosystem, government digital-infrastructure initiatives, and the broader Infosys diaspora. Sanjeev Aggarwal's tenure at Helion Venture Partners also provides early-stage relationships that mature into growth-stage opportunities. The firm emphasizes that founders approach them seeking a domestic, patient-capital partner rather than a foreign fund with exit-pressure timelines.

The firm operates as a hybrid. Nandan Nilekani provides the anchor LP commitment, giving the fund a family-office patience, but Fundamentum also raises external capital from other Indian entrepreneurs and family offices. This structure allows the partnership to function as a regulated fund manager while retaining a permanent-capital orientation for portfolio companies.

The firm targets Series C and Series D growth-stage rounds, writing equity cheques of $10 million to $20 million. Fundamentum does not invest at seed or Series A, instead focusing on companies that have proven unit economics and require capital to scale operations, expand geographically within India, or hold off on an IPO while building market share.

Fundamentum builds a portfolio of eight to ten companies per fund. Sanjeev Aggarwal or Ashish Kumar typically take a board seat in each portfolio company. This concentration is central to the firm's governance model; the partners spend significant time with each founder, and the fund's structure allows it to hold positions longer than a conventional 10-year closed-end fund.

Nandan Nilekani's wealth originates from his role as co-founder of Infosys, the Indian IT-services multinational he helped build from 1981 onward. He served as Infosys CEO from 2002 to 2007 and later as Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, where he architected the Aadhaar digital-identity system. His personal capital anchor-funds Fundamentum.

Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini Nilekani maintain extensive philanthropic activities through the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and other vehicles, which are structurally separate from The Fundamentum Partnership. The fund itself is a for-profit investment manager and does not manage program-related investments.