Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode’s business incubator Laboratory for Innovation Venturing and Entrepreneurship (LIVE) and Indian Bank has signed an MoU to launch a start-up funding scheme -- IndSpring Board -- to support early stage start-ups with loans upto Rs50 crore.

The loans disbursed under the IndSpring Board scheme from IIMK LIVE and Indian Bank can be used to meet start-ups’ operational expenditure and capital expenditure which includes working capital, purchase of fixed assets and other expenses. The start-ups selected under the scheme would have to be committed towards working on innovation, development or improvement of products or processes or services, or present a scalable business model with a high potential of employment generation or wealth creation.

The MoU was signed by Rajesh Upadhyayula, Executive Director, IIMK LIVE and B. Vijaya, Zonal Manager, Indian Bank, Kozhikode Zone.

Debt funding

Debashis Chatterjee, Director IIMK & Chairman IIMK LIVE said that the institute is ready to collaborate with Indian Bank to provide debt funding for its incubatee companies. With this, IIMK LIVE fulfils an important gap in its portfolio of services provided to start-ups in achieving their vision and consequently achieving our vision 2047 – Globalising Indian Thought”.

According to Imran Amin Siddiqui, Executive Director, Indian Bank, start-ups across the country have always been able to garner pre-seed funding, seed funding series A, B, etc where they more often than not, forego substantial equity to the investors. What they were not able to access was debt funding. Indian Bank in consultation with various stakeholders formulated a scheme called “IndSpring Board” which is perfectly tailored for start-ups.