Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani plans investment in Fortigo
Weeks after backing early-stage mobile payments startup Mubble and mobile publishing startup Juggernaut, Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani is in the process of backing yet another early-stage venture called Fortigo that will soon be launched by technology industry executives Vivek Malhotra and Anjani Mandal.
Besides Nilekani, Fortigo is also currently in talks to rope in other investors, including Accel Partners, although a final decision on Accel’s participation is expected to be taken sometime during this week, according to three people familiar with the development. All of them requested anonymity as these discussions are confidential.
Fortigo is currently in talks to raise close to $2 million in seed funding, the people mentioned above said.
“What Fortigo will attempt to do is solve fundamental challenges in the trucking and logistics space — the idea is to improve the quality of transportation services to businesses,” said the first person mentioned above.
“And the potential of this idea appealed to Nilekani who at this stage is looking to back ventures that can solve large problems and address pain points faced by consumers.” Malhotra and Mandal declined to comment.
Nilekani did not immediately respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.
The investment in Fortigo will mark at least the fourth venture that Nilekani has backed this year alone. Other than Mubble and Juggernaut, Nilekani also backed aerospace startup Team Indus earlier this year — he is an investor and advisor at Team Indus. Fortigo, which is attempting to address challenges in the trucking and logistics space with a new technology-powered fleet management service, will mostly target small and medium-sized businesses and truck owners with relatively smaller-sized fleets.
The fleet management service that Fortigo is building for truck owners will basically help truck owners manage and track their inventory more efficiently and help save logistics costs, while also helping truck drivers plan journeys more effectively and reduce the possibility of delays in transportation. Malhotra and Mandal came up with the idea for Fortigo about a year ago, and initiated talks with potential investors a few months ago, the people mentioned above said. Both Malhotra and Mandal are former executives of technology services firm Headstrong, which in 2011 was bought over by India’s largest BPO firm Genpact for $550 million.
Nilekani has previously chaired a committee for the National Highways in India, where he advised the government on building a more technology-savvy system for collection of highway tolls from large vehicles such as trucks.