Sidbi, Nrdc Join Hands To Fund Hi-Tech Industries

The Small Industries Development Bank of India and National Research Development Corporation, the public sector technology marketing company, have entered into a deal to finance high-tech industries on concessional terms available to the small scale sector.

NRDC will provide inputs like technology availability, market potential and patent information while SIDBI will chip in with finance either through its project loan scheme or as venture capital.

The SIDBI-NRDC partnership to finance high tech industries has been made possible by the government raising the limit on investment in plant and machinery of the small scale sector up to Rs 3 crore.

The industries for which the SIDBI-NRDC package would be available range from agribusiness to chemicals and electronics to materials.

The small scale sector was not taking to high tech areas due to the huge capital investment, lack of knowledge of where to seek technology and the market potential of the output of such technology.

Besides appriasing the small scale entrepreneur of technology availability, the NRDC will prepare bankable project reports containing all the technical information. The cost of preparing the report would be shared between by the beneficiary company, NRDC and SIDBI.

The SIDBI-NRDC deal was signed here last week between SIDBI managing director Shailendra Narain, NRDC managing director N K Sharma and secretary (small scale industries) Ashok Parthasarthi.

NRDC sources said after the project succeeds in producing novel products, the entrepreneur will be aided in filing appropriate patents at home and abroad.

The cost of filing patents too would be financed through schemes already existing for patenting Indian technology abroad.

The SIDBI-NRDC deal was brought about after a cursory study of such venture abroad that the maximum high technology projects were in the small sector and often several novel and interesting products were born out low investment but high tech projects.

In the US, there are specialist venture capitalists who finance only high tech projects in the small sector.

DE Shaw, the financial software gaint, has a division that finances industries based on novel ideas.