Former Sebi chief Damodaran to head committee to boost PE/VC investments

The Finance Ministry on Tuesday constituted an expert committee headed by former Sebi chief M. Damodaran to examine and suggest appropriate measures to address regulatory issues to scale up investments by venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE).

Other members of the committee include G. Mahalingam, former whole time member of SEBI and executive director of RBI; D.P. Nagesh Kumar, former member, CBIC; Ashish Verma, former principal chief commissioner of income tax; Poonam Gupta, director general of NCAER; and Prabhat Ranjan Acharya, director, Arun Jaitley National Institute of Financial Management.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her FY23 budget had proposed to set up the committee. “Venture Capital and Private Equity invested more than Rs 5.5 lakh crore last year facilitating one of the largest start-up and growth ecosystem. Scaling up this investment requires a holistic examination of regulatory and other frictions. An expert committee will be set up to examine and suggest appropriate measures,” she had said in her Budget speech.

The terms of reference of the committee include comprehensive study the end to end frictions and potential accelerants from regulatory policy and taxation to facilitate ease of investing, as well as to encourage investments in India; review issues, compliances and suggest simplifications and changes around further accelerating the growth of alternative capital to participate in the VC/PE industry; suggest measures to further accelerate investments into start-ups and sunrise sectors; suggest forward looking measures and future ready regulatory practices in addition to studying and emulating global best practices.