NR Narayana Murthy, Founder, Infosys, will head the 18-member committee set up by the capital market regulator SEBI to advise on developing alternative investments and the start-up ecosystem in India.

Named the Alternative Investment Policy Advisory Committee (AIPAC), the committee consists of marquee names, such as Sanjay Nayar, Chairman, Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (IVCA), Member & CEO, KKR India Advisors Pvt Ltd; Saurabh Srivastava, Founder, Indian Angel Network; Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Piramal Group; Devinjit Singh, MD, The Carlyle Group, India; Sunil Godhwani, Chairman and MD, Religare Enterprises; Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman and MD, TVS Capital Funds; besides representatives of the Finance Ministry, RBI and SEBI.

The group has the mandate to caution the regulator on possible hurdles, besides counselling on interface areas with fellow regulators.

On March 30, SEBI had come out with a discussion paper on alternate capital raising platform and review of other regulatory requirements to sort out the dilemma between investor protection and an enabling environment for start-ups to receive early-stage funding.

SEBI observed that its requirements related to promoters offering a minimum 20 per cent of the post-issue capital as lock-in for three years, detailed disclosure on objects of the issue, etc. In the discussion paper, SEBI proposed that the institutional trading platform be used for listing start-ups, besides mandating that the entire pre-issue equity capital be locked-in only for six months uniformly for all shareholders.

SEBI had proposed that the basis of issue price may include disclosures, other than projections, as deemed fit by the issuers to enable investors take informed decisions. Disclosures related to group companies, litigations, and creditors were also proposed.

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