The Hindu Business Line : TiE floats fund for start-ups

They will be part of the Chennai Fund, an initiative of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Chennai and have pledged Rs 25 lakh each to create the fund, according to Mr Gopal Srinivasan, Charter Member of TiE Chennai and Director of TVS Electronics Ltd.

The investors are: Mr Srinivasan, Mr Adi Saravanan (Allsec Technologies), Mr K.B. Chandrasekar (Jamcracker), Mr K. Pandiarajan (Ma Foi), Mr Prabhakar Ram (New Gen Imaging), Mr Praditpa K. Mohapatra (CEO, Technology Group, RPG), Mr Ram Mohan (Mohan & Venkatraman, Chartered Accountants), Mr R. Ramaraj (President, TiE Chennai), Mr H.R. Srinivasan (Take Solutions) and serial entrepreneur Mr Suresh Kalpathi.

Announcing the initiative at a meeting of the TiE Chennai, Mr Srinivasan said that the fund is part of the TiE-Entrepreneur Development Programme, which is designed to help and encourage entrepreneurs and enterprises in the seed/early stage of business.

There is a dearth of seed stage funding in the country and there are few organised setups to fund innovative ideas and entrepreneurs at early/seed stage.

The programme would bring together entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, service providers and other participants involved with entrepreneurs to help grow business ideas into enterprises and enterprises in early stage of business to grow further, he said.

It would encourage entrepreneurs through a `Comprehensive Enterprise Development Programme' consisting of The Chennai Fund, business mentoring programme, entrepreneur development/training programme, events/networking and TiE Innovation to be set up at IIT-Madras, he added.

Mr Srinivasan would spearhead the programme. He will be assisted by a committee consisting of Mr Ramaraj, Mr Mohapatra, Mr P. Christie (Director, Loyola Institute of Business Administration), Mr Arun Natarajan, CEO of Venture Intelligence, Dr L.S. Ganesh, Head, Department of Management Studies, IIT-Madras and Dr S. Sriram, Executive Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management.

According to Mr Srinivasan, the fund is targeting an initial corpus of Rs 5 crore, with initial commitments received from TiE Chapter members, entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capital funds.

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