Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, will no longer serve as a general partner at Fundamentum Partnership, the venture capital firm he co-founded nearly a decade ago.
Nilekani (pictured above) will be stepping down from his role as Fundamentum launches its third fund, targeting to raise about $200 million. He will be the fund’s anchor investor, and continue advising the firm and mentoring portfolio companies, his co-founder Sanjeev Aggarwal told TechCrunch.
Aggarwal described the shift as “just a title thing,” saying Nilekani would continue to advise the firm, mentor portfolio company founders, and provide strategic guidance. “He is an integral part of our firm. The one thing that he enjoys the most is mentoring the teams that we back, and he will continue to do so in Fund III.”
Nilekani, 71, is one of India’s best-known technology leaders. Besides co-founding Infosys, he led the creation of Aadhaar, India’s biometric identity system, and has been a leading advocate of the country’s digital public infrastructure, including the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payments network used by hundreds of millions of Indians. He has championed the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an initiative aimed at making e-commerce more open and interoperable in the country.
