North East sets up venture capital fund for startups

To encourage start-up ventures in the northeast region, the NEDFi in collaboration with the Ministry of DoNER, is setting up the “North East Venture Fund”, a dedicated venture capital fund for the region. The size of the fund would be Rs 100 crore which would be contributed by M-DoNER (Rs 45 crore) and NEDFi (Rs 30 crore). The balance amount of Rs 25 crore would be raised from other financial institution(s).

In this connection, NEDFi has already set up two wholly-owned subsidiary companies viz. NEDFi Trustee Ltd and NEDFi Venture Capital Ltd to operationalise the venture fund which is expected to be launched by October, 2016, after the same is registered with SEBI, an official release said.

The investment focus of the Venture Fund will be in early and growth stage investments mostly in the fields of IT & ITES, food processing, healthcare, tourism, retail and aggregation of services. North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) has been playing a proactive role in entrepreneurship development in the north eastern region, providing handholding support like capacity building, market linkages and advisory/ mentoring services to entrepreneurs including the much needed financial assistance to first generation entrepreneurs at concessional rate of interest, the release added.

Source: Money Control