Fundamentum launches Rs 3,000 crore AI, deeptech fund

BENGALURU: Nandan Nilekani-founded venture capital firm Fundamentum has launched its third fund, with a target corpus of Rs 3,000 crore to focus on funding artificial intelligence and deeptech startups.

The fund will be managed by Fundamentum Frontier Advisors (F2A), an investment platform led by Fundamentum cofounder Ashish Kumar. The structure includes Rs 2,000 crore through an India vehicle and up to Rs 1,000 crore through a parallel offshore vehicle. The capital will be deployed into the same set of companies, a structure commonly used by venture funds to pool domestic and overseas capital.

Nandan Nilekani is the new fund's anchor investor. An anchor investor is an early backer in a fund who commits capital before or during the initial fundraising process, helping signal confidence to other potential investors.

Former Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) Venture Capital senior fund manager Debraj Banerjee has joined F2A as general partner to co-lead its AI and deeptech strategy. General partners typically also invest some of their own money into the fund alongside external investors.

The new fund will back companies across consumer AI, enterprise AI and physical AI. It plans to invest Rs 50-150 crore each in 12-15 companies over three years.

“We are seeing a structural shift in how AI and deeptech are being built and adopted across sectors,” Kumar said. He said India has the right mix of talent, ambition, policy and capital to support companies building at the frontier.

Banerjee said AI and deeptech are moving from experimentation to scaled adoption across sectors. At Sidbi Venture Capital, his portfolio included QpiAI, Pantherun, Digantara, SigTuple, Myelin Foundry, OTPless and Fyllo. Fundamentum, founded in 2017, has backed companies such as Spinny, Kuku, AppsForBharat, Wishlink, FarEye and GenieMode.