Govt plans Rs. 5,000cr venture fund

Boosting infrastructure investment in social sector, the Union Government has recently decided in principle to set up a $1 billion amounting to Rs 5,000cr venture funds for new services and products that promise to bring about a see-change in the lives of poor across the country. The new fund will extensively cover infrastructure segments including water, education and healthcare, Adviser to Prime Minister, on public information, infrastructure and innovation Vipul Bansal said, adding that the fund would foster innovation across sectors covering all the states in the country.

He added that the government has set up a National Innovation Centre for overseeing the functioning of the fund across states. The government needs to provide money to those who have ideas but no seed capital and that initially government would provide seed capital of Rs 100cr for the fund. The initial corpus for the fund would be Rs 500cr, to be scaled up gradually to $1 billion over a period of time. It is going to be a private fund in which the government stake would be around 20 percent, he said.

The government has initiated talks with the private lending arm of the World Bank, International Finance Corporation for generating money. Some British agencies and a few others, besides some banks in India have already expressed their willingness to the to take part in the upcoming fund. Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and Infosys said the initiative would act as a catalyst for young entrepreneurs to innovate. It is, In fact, a great initiative, Infosys’ co-founder and executive co-chairman, S Gopalakrishnan said.