Tata Capital likely to invest in start-up fund

Tata Capital is likely to invest in the Innovation Fund being established by the Telangana government for the ambitious T-Hub project.

The Tata group firm has also shown interest to manage the fund. “We are going to have final leg of talks on August 12 with Tata Capital executives in Mumbai,” Telangana IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.

“Apart from Tata Capital, about 12 investors are keen to invest in the fund that will invest in start-ups that will come up in incubators as part of the hub,” he said.

Public-private mode Though it is going to invest in the private equity fund, the Telangana government plans to give the management of the fund to a private player to let it operate independently.

“We are not going to run the fund. We will run it in a public-private mode, leaving the management to the private player,” IT Minister KT Rama Rao told BusinessLine recently.

Addressing the press conference to announce the third edition of AugustFest here on Friday, the IT Secretary said the fund would have an initial corpus of ₹10 crore.

“When the T-Hub activity reaches its peak, the fund would have a size of about ₹600 crore,” he said.

The first phase of T-Hub, which was originally scheduled to be opened in June, has been deferred to September. “We have invited Ratan Tata to attend the inaugural. We are told he could make it in September,” a senior official said.

The first phase would come up at the International Institute of Information Technology (Hyderabad).

This would be followed by a standalone building for the hub in the second phase.

The hub would house incubators, investment firms and other stakeholders.