4 August 2016, India :
Tata Sons Ltd’s Chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, in partnership with the University of California, is setting up a venture capital fund with a corpus of around $100-150 million and has already started scouting for startups to invest.
In February, RNT Associates, the privately held investment firm of Ratan Tata, and the chief investment officer’s office of the University of California, announced a partnership to jointly fund start-ups and early-stage enterprises in India over the next 10 years.
At that time, Jagdeep Singh Bachher, Chief investment officer, University of California had said, We are looking for interesting opportunities across sectors, be it healthcare or alternate energy, and would be funding some of the best teams and giving them the runway and opportunity.
“They registered a fund with the markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India in June as a category II alternative investment fund, under the name UC-RNT Fund. The vehicle, apart from contributions from RNT Associates and University of California, will also look to raise third-party capital. They are looking at a corpus of $100-150 million for the fund,” stated one of the source.
Tata has invested in around 30 start-ups in the last two years, including online market place Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd), online furniture store Urban Ladder (Home Décor Solutions Pvt. Ltd), cab-hailing service Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd), online lingerie store Zivame (Actoserba Active Wholesale Pvt. Ltd) and many others across sectors such as healthcare, financial inclusion and e-commerce.
Source- Dealstreetasia