Why Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership believes in ‘fewer bets’

Established in 2017 as a $100 million fund, Fundamentum invests in startups at Series B or C stage where it leads rounds of $10 million to $25 million in value. Read on to understand Fundamentum’s two core tenets while investing in startups.

Friday February 18, 2022 , 3 min Read

The Indian startup ecosystem continues to witness venture capital (VC) firms investing into startups at a rapid pace, but Fundamentum Partnership — a fund co-founded by Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal — strongly follows the philosophy that concentration on a few with high conviction will always work better.

The success of this approach is clearly visible in Fundamentum’s portfolio; the fund has made six investments over the last four years. Two of these startups — PharmEasy and Spinny — are in the unicorn club.

“We want to build businesses, which become very large, and invest in that one company that can grow to that size,” says Ashish Kumar, General Partner, Fundamentum Partnership, in a conversation with YourStory.

Established in 2017 as a $100 million fund, Fundamentum invests in startups at Series B or C stage where it leads rounds of $10 million to $25 million in value. Read on to understand Fundamentum’s two core tenets while investing in startups.

Editor’s Pick: App Friday

In the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand — English is the main official language of communication, apart from over 50 countries, including India, where it is recognised as one of the official languages.

There is no other way but to learn English if one has to keep up with the fast-moving world. And the interestingly titled app, Cake, run by Cake Corp, will help you better your language skills. Read more.

Cake -- App Friday — *Credit: YourStory Design*

Startup Spotlight

Turning plastic waste to eco-friendly bricks

Guwahati-headquartered Zerund sought to replace red bricks with its patent-pending lightweight bricks that use waste plastic materials as one of the raw materials.

What started off as a discussion in the halls of the Assam Engineering College, amid a final year project, now has the potential to transform the brick industry in Assam, and become a nationally recognised startup. Read more.

News & Updates

Noida-headquartered robotics and automation solutions provider Addverb Technologies — a YourStory Tech50 2021 startup — earlier announced that it is planning to expand operations outside India. And now it is known that Addverb has closed a deal worth $1 billion to deploy its robots in Reliance Industries' Jamnagar Refinery.

SoftBank-backed global digital media and content creator company Jellysmack has entered the Indian market with its creator programme. The company will be starting its India operations with 21 content creators in Hindi and English, helping them diversify their portfolio across major platforms Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube to fuel their growth.

In a high-level joint meeting of all the Science ministries and Science departments, Jitendra Singh, Union Minister for Science and Technology (S&T), informed that so far, 38 ministries in the Indian government have sought technology support in different sectors.