Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will launch a fund on sustainable energy namely, 'Indian Fund for Sustainable Energy (INFUSE)' on August 25, 2011. As per sources, the Union Minister for New and Renewable energy Farooq Abdullah and the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi are scheduled to be present at the launch of INFUSE.
The main purpose of launching the fund is to support aspiring entrepreneurs in the sustainable energy sector. It is a joint venture between the private-public-academia in order to build sustainable energy undertakings for India. The fund is partnered by IIM-A, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), British Petroleum (BP) and Technology Development board (DST). Sources have also informed that the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A will work as the executing agency. Besides, the IIM-A would function as the nodal agency for the same.
Rakesh Basant, Chairperson of CIIE at IIM-A, said that they are planning to raise around Rs 100 crore in the next three years through more corporate participation in the fund. They would be focusing on young enterprises, start-ups and innovative business models who work with the existing renewable energy technologies. He added that once they have more capital, they would be capable of offering start-ups in this area anything between Rs 2-2.5 crore and more as capital depending on the project. This would help bridging the gap between seed funding and private equity players for an upcoming enterprise.
