GUWAHATI, August 19: North Eastern Development Fince Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) has been playing a proactive role in entrepreneurship development in the north-eastern region, providing handholding support like capacity building, market linkages and advisory/ mentoring services to entrepreneurs including the much needed fincial assistance to first generation entrepreneurs at concessiol rate of interest.
To encourage Startup Ventures in the region, NEDFi, in collaboration with the Ministry of DoNER, is setting up the ‘North East Venture Fund’, a dedicated venture capital fund for the north-eastern region. The size of the fund will be Rs 100 crore which will be contributed by M-DoNER (Rs 45 Ccrore) and NEDFi (Rs 30 crore). The balance amount of Rs .25 crore will be raised from other fincial institutions. In this connection, NEDFi has already set up two wholly-owned subsidiary companies – NEDFi Trustee Ltd and NEDFi Venture Capital Ltd — to operatiolize the Venture Fund which is expected to be launched by October, 2016, after the same is registered with SEBI. The investment focus of the Venture Fund will be in early and growth stage investments mostly in the fields of IT & ITES, Food processing, Healthcare, Tourism, Retail and Aggregation of Services. NEVF would like to invest in areas such as development of new products and services, upgrading technology, expansion or diversification, process improvement and quality improvement with the purpose of creating value for all stakeholders, a press release said.