The government today announced that it will provide Rs. 100 crore as seed money for setting up the India Inclusive Innovation Fund to promote new ideas.
“With permission of Prime Minister, I propose to make an initial contribution of Rs. 100 crore to kick-start the India Inclusive Innovation Fund (IIIF)...I expect that IIIF will be a global leader in pioneering low cost innovation,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here while releasing the first report of National Innovation Council.
The NInC, a body to promote new ideas for inclusive development was set up last year in August by the government.
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Mr. Mukherjee said, however, that the creation of the fund alone would not address the problems of a large section of society.
“Venture capital does not cater to solving the problems of bottom of the population. Our government is committed to give them their due opportunity,” Mr. Mukherjee said.
Eventually NInC will create IIIF with corpus of Rs. 5,000 crore in phases. The corpus will be used to back enterprises developing innovative solution for customers who lie in the ’bottom 500 million’ in Indian society.
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However, IIIF will operate as a ‘for-profit’ entity with a focus on social investment. NInC is likely to start operating the fund after accumulating Rs. 500 crore.