Rajasthan VC eyes overseas market

Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund plans to tap overseas markets from the next financial year and is targetting a corpus of $100 million from foreign markets by 2011-12.

“We are planning to structure a Mauritius-based entity which would be instrumental in roping in foreign funds from global private equity players. We are in talks with a couple of law firms for the final shape of the entity,” RVCF CEO Girish Gupta said, adding that the fund would be the first regional fund to go global.

State-run RVCF is targeting a corpus of $100 million from overseas markets by 2011-12, he said. RVCF is the state’s first VC fund, mandated to operate on pan-Indian basis.

It has been conceptualised and supported by RIICO and the Small Industries Development Bank of India. RVCF, which began operations in 2002, today has a portfolio of 15 companies in Rajasthan and the NCR region.

“We have been growing exponentially since 2007-08 when our corpus was just Rs 16 crore. We clocked a corpus of Rs 116 crore in the last fiscal and are targeting Rs 166 crore corpus for this fiscal,” Gupta said.

The state-run VC fund has modified its fund strategy to safeguard interests of its investors in this global downturn.

“We are planning to fund less impacted sectors like non formal education, health care sector, media and entertainment, clean technology and nano-technology where returns are somewhat secured,” he said.