While the Indian technology Industry has established itself globally the thrust has hitherto been on service delivery. While the industry has grown at a phenomenal rate, it has now evolved to a size where its future growth will be driven by a set of factors which are different from the traditional ones.  One of the factors dictating the next phase of growth of the Indian technology industry will be innovation and creation of frontier technologies, which will enable the value created per employee to be a greater multiple of that currently achieved.

These innovations are not generated in silos, and it takes a mature enabling ecosystem to provide the environment and the impetus to make IP creation the norm rather than the exception. The NASSCOM-BCG Innovation Report has suggested an agenda for the relevant stakeholders based on which the innovation ecosystem can be nurtured in India. Amongst these are some that would promote IP creation in medium and large firms and others that would be applicable to the small entrepreneur.

As part of it’s initiatives to construct a robust innovation ecosystem, NASSCOM has entered into an MoU with ICICI Knowledge Park, to promote an early stage seed capital fund to support technology entrepreneurs working on the technology advancement and IP creation.. The fund will seek to address the gap in early stage funding and seeks to promote IP creation in the technology sector. While ICICI Knowledge Park’s hands-on experience in working with Biotechnology and Life Science incubates and its will be leveraged, NASSCOM’s strong presence in the Information Technology space will contribute towards a synergic partnership.

The objectives of the India Innovation Fund are as follows:

• Promote innovation in frontier or emerging technologies through patient investment
• Contribute to unlocking the commercial value in inventions across the country
• Encourage entrepreneurship through providing the necessary support to convert innovative ideas to commercial value
• Leverage the knowledge of highly successful professionals to provide high quality knowledge inputs to the entrepreneurship community
• Enable innovative start-up companies to reach a stage where they can attract follow-on venture capital funding

 

 

Updated on: 07 May, 2008