This VC firm wants to back India’s next big startups before they hit Series B

Bengaluru-based Fundamentum Partnership has launched its third fund, targeting a corpus of Rs 2,200 crore including a Rs 400 crore greenshoe option, aimed squarely at Indian startups that have already found product-market fit and now need capital to scale.

The growth-stage firm was co-founded in 2017 by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and entrepreneur-investor Sanjeev Aggarwal to focus on Series B investments, a stage where India’s funding ecosystem has historically had fewer specialised investors compared with the seed and early-stage market. “India’s Series B moment is now,” Mayank Kachhwaha, general partner at Fundamentum, told TOI, pointing to a much larger pipeline of companies ready for growth capital as the early-stage ecosystem has expanded.

Fund III will write initial cheques of Rs 100 crore to Rs 150 crore, typically for 10-15% ownership stakes, and is expected to back eight to 10 companies, with about 60% of the corpus going toward initial investments and the remainder reserved for follow-on rounds. A first close is expected within three to six months.

The fund will prioritise consumer technology, fintech, and AI-native or AI-enabled businesses, with roughly 80% of the corpus expected to flow to consumer and fintech startups. Fundamentum’s portfolio already includes Spinny, PharmEasy, Kuku, AppsForBharat, ApnaMart, FlexiLoans, Stable Money, TransBnk, Olyv and ProcMart, with its second fund delivering a 26% gross internal rate of return and 123% portfolio growth over the past year.

Nilekani will anchor Fund III as a limited partner, in what the firm called his largest commitment to any venture capital firm, while day-to-day leadership shifts to a broader group of general partners: Aggarwal, Prateek Jain, Kachhwaha and Sanjay Chaturvedi.