BackRs100 crore venture corpus for green businesses announced
Rs100 crore venture corpus for green businesses announced
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New Delhi: Nachiket Mor, Deputy managing director, ICICI Bank, announced a Rs100 crore corpus for innovation and development of green businesses in India at a seminar on venture capital finance, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) on 26 April.
Mor said: “The burden of climatic changes will be borne by the developing countries. Which is why a huge market for green business is opening up." He added that the market for clean energy was likely to double by 2015.
New Ventures India’s goal is to achieve at least $15 million investments in 20 sustainable and green businesses by 2008. These include areas of green building materials, energy efficient products and services, renewable energy and water products.
Targetted at small and medium enterprises, the fund would offer short- and medium-term assistance in a range of Rs5-40 lakh, depending on the size of the project.
At the seminar, George Deikun, Mission Director – USAID India, American Embassy, said the green equity fund will look at underserved markets with a focus on SMEs in India. He said 95% of the fund’s investments are in developing countries, mostly India, Brazil and China. He added that India needs careful planning and creativity to successfully execute the upcoming green business projects.
CII–Godrej GBC aims at creating India as one of the global leaders in green businesses and India has leadership potential in green technology in the cement, paper, green buildings and renewable energy sector, said S. Raghupathy, Senior Director and Head CII – Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Center (Godrej GBC). Raghupathy mentioned that ‘New Ventures India’ started by CII–Godrej GBC is already facilitating 10 projects and would like to scale-up its operation for which new projects and entrepreneurs are being invited.
L.K. Singhvi, executive director, Sebi said that the challenge for venture capitalists would be to involve creativity with growth that can be inclusive as well as sustainable. There are lots of difficulties in creating venture capital funds and policy should be framed accordingly to create an environment to encourage investment by venture capitalists, he said.
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