Pan-IIT Alumni India, the alumni body of the Indian Institutes of Technology, is working on setting up a Rs.1,000 crore venture capital fund to focus on social impact enterprises and the startup ecosystem. This will be the first such VC fund by the association.
The group will raise the fund through several avenues including alliances with financial institutions and will also tap on its large network of IIT-ians, Ashok Madhukar, Chairman of Pan-IIT Alumni India, told. He said it will take about 18 months to create the fund.
“This is a need-based intervention to support startups and sector development. The probable investor profile will take shape by end of March 2017,” Madhukar said.
“The VC fund will be part of a larger enterprise development programme that we are kicking off soon. Through this programme, we will support networking, entrepreneurship and access to finance among other things,” Madhukar said, adding that the programme is expected to kick off from April.
The fund will have a significant focus on entrepreneurs coming out of IITs. Several other VC funds such as that of the IvyCap Ventures have placed almost exclusive focus on startups founded by alumni of premier education institutions, mainly the IITs and IIMs.
As part of its other programmes, the IIT alumni group will also start a knowledge centre in Chennai to create a matrix database of all technology solutions available in different areas, both from the government and from the private sector, which Madhukar said will help the Pan-IIT Alumni to act as a “knowledge intelligence bridge” between technologies and needs of entrepreneurs.
The group is also working with Saurabh Chandra, Former Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), who is also an IIT alumnus, to create a compendium that will include all startup-related initiatives and incentives by the government.
“Startups are not taking enough advantage of all the benefits that the government is offering. It is because there is a huge gap in terms of information,” Chandra said. “The compendium will act as a clearing house for information on any startup-related policy.”
The first draft of the compendium is likely to be ready by March.
Source: ET Tech
