Nasscom and ICICI Knowledge Park have come together to launch a fund aimed at providing seed capital to start-up ventures creating intellectual property.
The Nasscom-ICICI Knowledge Park Innovation Fund (NIIF) will have a corpus of about Rs 100 crore and will operate as an independent entity managed by a professional team. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), ICICI Knowledge Park and Bharti Airtel are the anchor investors.
The fund is expected to be operational by April this year and will attract the first round of investment from another 8-10 institutional investors, outgoing Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said. The plans for follow-on rounds are to attract another Rs 150 crore – Rs 200 crore.
TCS said it is not looking for any direct benefit from this investment. “TCS may or may not benefit but we are looking at it as something transformational,” said MD and CEO, S Ramadorai. TCS has contributed Rs 10 crore to the fund, and Bharti Airtel and ICICI Knowledge Park gave Rs 5 crore each.
The focus areas for the fund are wireless technologies, automotive infotronics, life sciences, energy conservation technologies and devices and medical devices. “A stage has come when companies have to think beyond their interest. Companies can grow only when India grows but this thinking hasn’t yet percolated to all companies,” said ICICI group chairman N Vaghul.
NIIF fund will invest from Rs 1 crore – Rs 10 crore in early stage companies. Some of the other funds targeted at the early and seed stage funding in India are the Seed Fund, Indian Angel Network and Erasmic Venture Fund. However, these are not targeted only at start ups focused on creating IP.
Source: Economic Times