The National Innovation Councul and the ministry of MSME have jointly launched the India Inclusive Innovation Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 500 crore to solve the problems of citizens at the base of the economic pyramid in India. The government will be contributing Rs 100 crore to the fund and the remaining will come from banks, insurance companies and overseas financial and development institutions. Having a life of nine years, the fund aims to increase its corpus upto Rs 5000 crore over the next two years. As much as 50% of the fund will be deployed to enterprises that fall in the MSME stage. The fund, approved by the union cabinet will be registered under SEBI’s Alternative Investment Fund Category I guidelines and will invest in innovative ventures that are scalable, sustainable, profitable across sectors like healthcare, food, nutrition, agriculture, education and skill development, energy, financial inclusion, water, sanitation employment generation, etc. The fund will also partner the entire ecosystem in this space including incubators, angel groups and also public research and development programmes and laboratories to support the commercialisation and deployment of socially relevant innovative technologies and solutions. The day to day operations of the fund would be entrusted to an asset management company.
