The Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has committed to invest Rs 180 crore in the proposed Rs 600-crore India Opportunities Fund series.
The India Opportunities Fund is a venture capital fund and would be the third fund of SIDBI Venture Capital, a SIDBI subsidiary.
Public sector banks and insurance companies have also committed investments to this fund, said Mr S. Muhnot, Chairman and Managing Director of SIDBI. He said SIDBI’s Rs 180-crore contribution would come out of the Rs 5,000 crore that the Government has allocated to it in this year’s Budget for promoting venture capital activity in the country.
The India Opportunities Fund, which will be launched soon, would focus on micro, small and medium enterprises, Mr Muhnot said. It would be a sector-agnostic fund.
SIDBI Venture Capital already has two funds — National Venture Fund (corpus Rs 100 crore) for the software and IT industry, and SME Growth Fund with a corpus of Rs 500 crore.
Mr Muhnot said SIDBI expected returns of at least 15 per cent on the proposed Rs 180 crore investments in the Fund.
SIDBI is also looking to enter the loan syndication and consultancy businesses. Plans are afoot to set up credit facilitation centres across 100 MSME clusters. These centres would help entrepreneurs get funding from banks, Mr Muhnot said.