TiE raises 100 mn

NEW DELHI, APR 14: The Silicon Valley-based TheIndUS Entrepreneurs TiE has raised 100 million of the proposed one billion dollar fund ...

NEW DELHI, APR 14: The Silicon Valley-based TheIndUS Entrepreneurs TiE has raised 100 million of the proposed one billion dollar fund to help Indian Institutes of Technology IITs attain world class standard.

quot;TiE has gathered 100 million till date for the fund and the remaning would be raised in five years,quot; TiE president Kanwal Rekhi told PTI. TiE, a body of US-based Indian infotech entrepreneurs, has proposed to create a one billion dollar corpus in five years to build better infrastructure and research facilities, Rekhi said.

He clarified that there was no proposal to take over IITs by TiE and the fund was only as token of 8216;paying back8217;. quot;We have benefitted from these institutes being its products and now it is our time to pay back,quot; he added.

TiE wants IITs to attain a the standard of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT and current efforts are aimed at this goal. The offer to create the corpus was made to the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee by an eight-member TiE delegation, including the wealthiest Indian Desh Deshpande when they met him in Decemeber last week.

TiE also offered to help the government in promoting telecom, biotechnology and other related knowledge-based enterprises. Rekhi, Silicon Valley based venture capitalist, said idea of having the government backed venture fund was quot;simply out of placequot; as such money was risk fund.

quot;How the government, which itself was in tight financial situation, would account for the investments in such risky ventures that go bust,quot; he asked and said for every investment that made it big nine others had to fold up their operations.

The venture capital was play money in hands of those with surplus funds and who felt comfortable with high risks that go along with high uncertaintity and failures, he said.

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Asked about sustainability of current DOT.com boom in India, he said quot;99 per cent was euphoria, but some of them would emerge stronger. Even those who fail, turn wiser for their next attempt.quot;

The mania would soon subside through process of self correction, he said adding such correction was happening in US and same process would repeat here.

He said, DOT.com firms must have clear line of revenues and earn profits and failure to do so would force investors to dump their stocks as it happened for 100 infotech Initial Price Offering on the US bourses.

Present support in Indian IT exports were dominated by infotech services marked by low value addition but it made perfect sense the same companies would later invest in research and develop products fetching high returns, he said.