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| Innovation fund raises Rs 40 cr in first tranche |
| BS Reporter / Mumbai Nov 06, 2009, 00:00 IST |
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The India Innovation Fund (IIF) — set up in January 2008 — promoted by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and ICICI Knowledge Park, has achieved its first closing corpus of Rs 40 crore. This will be scaled up to Rs 100 crore.
The anchor investors of IIF at the first closing are Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), IKP Trust, Department of Science & Technology and Bharti Airtel.
IIF, a first-of-its-kind national initiative, is an early-stage fund and has been created to promote intellectual property (IP)-driven innovations in frontier or emerging technologies through investments.
IIF will also encourage technology entrepreneurship to enable innovative start-ups to reach a stage of self sustenance and growth. The fund is targeted at early-stage companies in information and communication technologies (ICT) and life sciences.
At the time of the fund’s launch last year, TCS had committed to invest Rs 10 crore, whereas Bharti Airtel and IKP were to invest Rs 5 crore each. The target for the corpus fund is around Rs 100 crore from a maximum of 8-10 institutional investors.
The key sectors for investment are automotive infotronics & intelligent transport systems, telecom technologies, drugs & pharmaceuticals, medical devices and IT with multi-sector applications.
IIF is being managed by IKP Investment Management Co (IKPIMC). IKPIMC has appointed former Nasscom President Kiran Karnik as the chairman of its board. The board also has Bala Manian, a serial entrepreneur with several successful start-ups in the US to his credit, and Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, MD & CEO, IKP.
Investments by the fund will be overseen by an investment committee having experts such as Jai Menon, director (technology & customer services), Bharti Airtel, Sharad Sharma, former CEO, Yahoo R&D India, Shrikumar Suryanarayan, director general, ABLE (Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises), the government of India and other investor representatives.
“IIF has been established to address this serious issue of lack of seed capital. The fund will focus on start-ups involved in IP creation in both IT and life-sciences. It is a source of great satisfaction that some of India’s best known corporate brands and leading innovators in their respective industries – TCS, IKP and Bharti Airtel – along with the government’s Department of Science and Technology have collaborated for this initiative,” said Kiran Karnik, chairman of the IKP Investment Management Co.
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