Infosys carves $250M ’Innovate in India Fund’ to back startups from innovation fund

By Anand Rai

  • 14 Jan 2015

IT major Infosys Ltd has carved a new $250 million (Rs 1,554 crore) ‘Innovate in India Fund’, which is roughly half of its 'Innovation Fund' aimed at backing startups and new ideas.

The new fund will be dedicated for investments in new Indian companies that will be inducted into the global ecosystem of strategic partners that the company is building.

“With the Innovate in India Fund, Infosys will invest in Indian startups, help amplify their engineering and operations, as well as help bring their innovations to market at scale. We look forward to working with innovative companies to strengthen our collective potential and also accelerate the success of the PM’s ‘Digital India’ mission,” said Vishal Sikka, CEO and MD, Infosys.

Last week, Infosys had expanded the corpus of its global innovation fund to $500 million from the original $100 million to provide financing to startups and new ideas in the field of next generation technology. The capital will be used to invest in young companies world-wide innovating in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, Internet of Things or IoT, collaboration and design.

The IT giant had announced in April 2013 that it is planning to float a $100 million innovation fund for the startup community to focus on ideas, products and platforms. However, it has not publicly announced any investments as part of this fund yet.

The Bangalore-headquartered company has been focusing on IP-related products, platforms and solutions (PPS) business as part of its proposed ‘Infosys 3.0’ strategy, which is mainly aimed at widening the focus and looking to move higher in the value chain.

In August last year, Sikka took over as the first non-founder CEO of Infosys and laid down plans to transform the troubled tech company by working with the startup community, further strengthening intellectual property, products and platforms and also finding new software opportunities with clients.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)