Textiles Ministry to launch venture capital fund with SIDBI

Aiming to provide support to start-ups, Textiles Ministry will launch Tex-Venture Capital Fund with a minimum corpus of Rs 35 crore in association with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

"The primary objective of the fund will be to make early and growth stage investments in small enterprises. These will be innovative enterprises in new and emerging fields in textiles industry, including powerloom sector and allied products & services."

"Textiles Ministry and SIDBI are the initial contributors to the fund which is expected to commence with a minimum corpus of Rs 35 crore while the targeted fund size is Rs 80 crore," SIDBI Deputy Managing Director N K Maini told PTI.

SIDBI is the fund's sponsor and each investment will be limited to Rs 3 crore. The funds will commence operation shortly, Maini added.

Textiles Minister Santosh Gangwar, who was here to chair the state textiles ministers' conference, said: "To provide equity to start-up entrepreneurs, we shall be launching a Tex-Venture Capital Fund in association with SIDBI. The fund shall be started with an initial capital of Rs 35 crore and scaled up further."

The Ministry also announced a new scheme to help the textile industry by providing environment-friendly processing technology.

The Integrated Processing Development Scheme (IPDS) would set up new processing parks as well as support upgradation of existing processing clusters specifically in the area of water and waste water management.

Under the scheme, the central government will provide financial support up to 50% of the project cost with a maximum ceiling of Rs 75 crore in case of Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) units and Rs 10 crore in case of Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP).

States will provide 25 per cent of the project cost and the remaining will be mobilised by the SPV.