CHENNAI:Pontaq, the first UK-based fund with a focus on UK-India start-ups, said it has created the UK-India Innovation Fund 3 (UIIF-3) with a corpus of more than Rs 400 crore to fuel about 15-20 start-ups in fields including fintech and emerging technologies.
Even as the company said that the fund will invest predominantly in UK-centric businesses, Indian start-ups that look to expand to the UK would also be looked at as opportunities, thereby offering a substantial investment arbitrage.The fund aims to create a sustainable economic impact in the UK-India corridor by enabling the creation of at least 2,500 jobs initially.
“We believe that UIIF-3 will pave the way for a much stronger technology transfer between the two countries. Industry 4.0 is creating ever more opportunities for the UK and India to partner, with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, blockchain, data analytics and other digital services. This could not come at a better time for Britain, with Brexit looming. As one door closes, another must open,” said Dr Mohan Kaul, Chairman, Pontaq.
Pontaq’s new fund will focus on areas including fintech (including RegTech and InsurTech), smart cities tech (comprising of technologies in energy, waste, water and transport) and emerging technologies (Internet of Things, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning), blockchain and others, the company said.
With India showing exponential growth in the number of IoT devices, which is expected to increase to 2.7 billion by 2020 from the current 200 million, Pontaq said it considered India as one of the key markets to invest in.
“India is uniquely poised to take a leap into the next era of digital growth and development by tapping the potential of emerging technologies like IoT, Big Data, AI, blockchain and robotics,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of IT, Law & Justice, at the launch in UK.