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.
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.
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.