Incubation fund for hi-tech sector likely

The department of science and technology, government of India, is planning to introduce an incubation fund for budding entrepreneurs.

Addressing a press conference, H K Mittal, advisor & head, National Entrepreneurship Development Board, department of science & technology, government of India, said that money from the fund would be given to institutions promoting entrepreneurship.

This would be a kind of pre-bankers/venture capital funding. The corpus was yet to be worked out but, was likely to be between Rs 5 crore and Rs 10 crore. At present, there were 34 business incubators.

One such entrepreneurship development cell was at the St Xavier's College, Kolkata. The cell was sponsored by the department of science and technology, government of India.

In collaboration with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Kolkata chapter, the cell was presenting a workshop for undergraduates, 'Intuition to Innovation Entrepreneurship in ITES sector'.

The workshop was a six-day workshop and seven colleges were participating.The main objective of the workshop was to bring industry-institute interaction off the drawing board into the teaching institution.

The cell, in the past, has organised three awareness camps with some 11 colleges participating with a total number of 187 students.