GUWAHATI:
State-run Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) and North Eastern Development Finance Corporation (NEDFi) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will enable the two entities to support startups from the Northeast by way of equity funding.
Under the initiative, corpus fund of Rs 30 crore has been initiated for the startups.
“To create a self-sustaining fund as part of its flagship startup initiative, ‘NRL iDEATION’, NRL has adopted an equity investment strategy in startups by way of constituting an Angel Fund under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Alternative Investment Fund) Regulations, 2012, an NRL spokesperson said.
The spokesperson revealed that the Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) is proposed to be created with a total corpus of Rs. 30 crores. As required by SEBI guidelines for AIF, NRL has engaged NVCL as Fund Manager to manage the startup equity portfolio of NRL.
The MoU was signed by Senior CGM (Corporate Affairs), Nikunja Borthakur and executive director of NEDFi, SK Baruah, in the presence of NRL managing director (i/c) Bhaskar Jyoti Phukan, director (finance)NRL, Indranil Mittra and other senior officials of NRL and NEDFi.
NRL has so far supported startups through a Corpus Fund of Rs 10 Crore identified for the purpose under its flagship startup initiative, NRL iDEATION.
Launched in July 2017, NRL iDEATION has forged ahead with the single point objective of building, strengthening, consolidating & developing the startup eco-system in the Northeast while carving out its future roadmap to start investing equity in startups.
NRL iDEATION is focused on providing the right financial impetus to the growing startup ecosystem of the Northeast. So far, it has created an impact for 37 startups in stages ranging from proof of concept to scale-up and spanning from Agri & allied to SaaS sector with total funding of Rs 8.5 crore.