The Department of Electronics & Information Technology and Canbank Venture Capital Fund Ltd will launch the Electronics Development Fund (EDF) in Mumbai on February 15.
Communications & Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, will formally announce the launch with handing over of the letter of commitment to the first group of Daughter Funds under EDF, an official press release said here today.
The Electronics Development Fund Policy was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the inauguration of Digital India Week on July 1, 2015. The Government appointed Canbank Venture Capital Fund Pvt. Ltd. (CVCFL) to house the EDF on September 4, 2015.
EDF, an initiative of IT Department, is formulated as a “Fund of Funds” to participate in “Daughter Funds” which in turn will provide risk capital to companies developing new technologies in the area of electronics, nano-electronics and Information Technology (IT).
The target beneficiaries of the EDF will be Daughter Funds (set up to achieve the objectives of the EDF policy) registered in India and abiding by the relevant rules and regulations including the SEBI regulations on Venture Funds.
The corpus of a Daughter Fund will be determined by market requirements and the capacity of its Fund Manager to cater to the requirements of the Fund. The supported Daughter Funds will promote innovation, R&D and product development within the country in the specified fields of electronics, nano-electronics and IT. They will also support acquisition of foreign companies and technologies for products imported in India in large volume. The core focus of the Daughter Funds would be to develop domestic design capabilities. It will create a resource pool of IP within the country in the specified fields.
EDF enables creation of an ecosystem for providing risk capital to both industry and academia to undertake research and development in these technology areas. It will, in the process, enrich the intellectual property in the country and encourage more entrepreneurs towards product and technology development, the release added.
