Venture capitalists knock on IIM-A doors

Even as four students turned down lucrative offers from Deutsche Bank to start their own venture, at least two more are set to follow suit.

This has sparked off a 'start-up' fever with venture capitalists and angel investors suddenly making a beeline to explore funding of their start-ups.

Networking through the institute's Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), the venture capitalists and angel investors have already had meetings with several students and are also looking to fund incubatees.

Although formal deals have not taken place as of yet, officials in the institute have confirmed the high interest in start-ups this year has led to a number of queries from venture capitalists and things are expected to fall into place by end February.

IIM-A's CIIE, which is supported by the Gujarat government, Department of Science and Technology and Wadhwani Foundation has confirmed that apart from the interest shown by investors to fund start-ups,international venture capitalists have, for the first time expressed interest to fund incubatees in the institute.

"We are also looking at collaborating with three international universities for joint incubation projects for which talks are in the advanced stages," said Kunal Upadhyay, CEO, CIIE-IIM-A.

In 2004, IIM-A had established a joint incubator project with Cornell University where 8-9 students from IIM-A had worked with their counterparts from the American University.

Typically, a seed fund for an incubatee could require funding of anything between Rs 20 lakh to Rs 3 crore depending on the project and venture capitalists and angel investors get in touch with incubatees through CIIE which manages the infrastructure and network support.

"There has been a tremendous funding incubatees which will be supported by CIIE's decision to increase the number of incubator seats from 12 to 18 and to hire more staff members from the current six to 12 by the end of March," said Upadhyay, who had passed out from IIM-A in 2005 and quit his job with American Express to join CIIE.

Next on the centre's plans is to scout for corporate partners with whom it intends to collaborate on long term seat funding and ensure more Intellectual Property filings for the incubatees.

The centre has tie-ups with the incubator centres at NID, IIT-Bombay, IIT Kanpur and IIT-Delhi and is on the verge of expanding its collaborations with many other premier institutes in the country in the coming few months.

After the success of the Inflow meter, an IV fluid monitoring device incubated at CIIE and designed at NID, the centre is in the final stages of wrapping a funding deal for an incubatee who has pioneered an Educational Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Incidentally, as this paper earlier reporter, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) too are planning to soon have a venture capital fund (VCF) on their campuses.

IIT Bombay is in talks with Infosys Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and other major IT players to seek help to start a venture capital fund. IIT Madras, too, is considering setting up a VC fund on its campus.

IIT Delhi, will explore the option in future, it says. These premier institutes are looking for VC funds as they are the main source of capital for seed stage ventures.

Typically, funds that make seed stage investments would have a fund size of not more than Rs 250 crore ($50 million).