MUMBAI, INDIA: Some leading companies and government have come together and launched a Rs. 100 crore India Innovation Fund (IIF) to help technology startups in their early stages of business development.

The IIF has been formally launched with four key anchor investors - Tata Consultancy Sevices (TCS), Bharti Airtel, ICICI Knowledge Park Trust and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Government of India - contributing the initial corpus of Rs. 40 crore.

“We hope to close the Fund soon with Rs. 100 crore,” said Ms Deepanvita Chattopadhyaya, CEO and MD of Hyderabad-based IKP Knowledge Park, which would play a key role in administering the fund.

The IIF is a joint initiative of IKP (formerly ICICI Knowledge Park) and the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). The Fund will be managed by IKP  Investment Management Company created for this purpose. A committee headed by former NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik, with serial entrepreneur Bala Manian (head of ReaMetrix, Bangalore) and others, will assist the  fund.

The fund will help start-ups in information technology, communications and life sciences,  Chattopadhyaya told the 5th BioInvest Conference organized by the Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises(ABLE) in Mumbai on November 5.

IIF will fund promising companies with disbursals ranging from Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 5 crore.

According to a NASSCOM statement, the IIF has been registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the market regulator. The corpus will come from institutional investors targeting specific investment areas.

A separate expert committee with members including Dr Jai Menon, a director at Bharti Airtel, Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo! R&D India, Dr Shrikumar Suryanarayan, director-general, ABLE, will evaluate investments in tech start-ups.

The fund will strive to provide early stage investments in companies to create intellectual property(IP)-driven innovation in emerging technologies.

Some identified sectors are: automotive infotronics, intelligent transport systems, drug discovery, medical devices and innovative uses of IT. The focus will be on identifying and supporting disruptive technology innovations for the domestic market as well as to acquire global footprint from India base.