Infosys co-founders Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S D Shibulal keep faith in startups

BENGALURU/CHENNAI: Infosys co-founders continue to back innovations using technology , cementing their presence in the startup space.Nandan Nilekani has invested in 10 startups, with the latest being RailYatri.in on Wednesday . His former colleague Kris Gopalakrishnan has made eight personal investments, and another five investments with S D Shibulal through Axilor Ventures. Shibulal is not known to have invested in startups independently.
Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal also announced on Wednesday an investment via Axilor in a Silicon Valley-based startup MUrgency -an emergency response mobile application. MUrgency ensures help from the nearest doctor, nurse or paramedic in a medical emergency . MUrgen cy was developed in association with the United Nations Development Programme, and in academic partnership with Stanford ChangeLabs, Harvard Asia Center and MIT Global Health.

The Nilekani-backed RailYatri.in is an online informa tion platform for rail travellers in the country . It provides travellers with information such as predicting a train's delay , the platform number of its arrival, coach position, ontime history and whether a consumer's waiting list ticket will get confirmed by analysing railway data. Most of Nilekani's investments are personal, while Gopalakrishnan makes a few of his investments through Axilor.

Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal retired from Infosys in 2014 and set up Axilor along with Infosys co-founder Srinath Batni and Tarun Khanna to help early-stage startups in areas like e-commerce, healthcare, life sciences, sustainability and clean technology .

Nilekani and Gopalakrishnan tend to invest in startups with a strong technology focus. They also support startups in education and health care sectors out of sheer personal interest. Nilekani supports EkStep, while Gopalakrishnan has donated money for brain research. The startups look forward to mentoring from them to scale their businesses.

Nilekani said, “What excites me about RailYatri is the fact that this is a new-age product made by Indians for Indians. The app, which intelligently harnesses the power of smartphones, data and mobile payments, has a huge opportunity of impacting the lives of millions of travellers.“

Shafi Mather, founder, MUrgency, said, “To have Axilor as an investor is truly an honour and recognition of the potential of MUrgency.The company will use the proceeds of the funding to develop the brand, recruit talent, augment technology and scale operations.“