NASSCOM's Innovation Fund Achieves First Closure

NASSCOM and ICICI Knowledge Park promoted Innovation Fnd has has achieved its first closing corpus of Rs 40 cr, which will be scaled up to Rs 100 cr.

TCS, IKP Trust, Department of Science & Technology and Bharti Airtel were the investors for fthe fund.

IIF, a first-of-its-kind national initiative, is an early-stage fund and has been created to promote intellectual property (IP)-driven innovations in frontier or emerging technologies through investments.

The aim of the fund is to produce over 10-15 good product-driven companies over an 8-10 year lifecycle. The fund, which has already received nearly 40 proposals, may see its first investment as early as in January. It may invest from Rs 50 lakh to up to Rs 5 cr in milestone-linked stages in each portfolio company.

IIF will also encourage technology entrepreneurship to enable innovative start-ups to reach a stage of self sustenance and growth. The fund is targeted at early-stage companies in information and communication technologies (ICT) and life sciences.

At the time of the fund’s launch last year, TCS had committed to invest Rs 10 crore, whereas Bharti Airtel and IKP were to invest Rs 5 crore each. The target for the corpus fund is around Rs 100 crore from a maximum of 8-10 institutional investors.

The key sectors for investment are automotive infotronics & intelligent transport systems, telecom technologies, drugs & pharmaceuticals, medical devices and IT with multi-sector applications.

IIF is being managed by IKP Investment Management Co (IKPIMC). IKPIMC has appointed former Nasscom President Kiran Karnik as the chairman of its board. The board also has Bala Manian, a serial entrepreneur with several successful start-ups in the US to his credit, and Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, MD & CEO, IKP.

Investments by the fund will be overseen by an investment committee having experts such as Jai Menon, director (technology & customer services), Bharti Airtel, Sharad Sharma, former CEO, Yahoo R&D India, Shrikumar Suryanarayan, director general, ABLE (Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises), the government of India and other investor representatives.

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