The Bharat Fund is a public-private-academia partnership set up by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). The objective of the fund, inter-alia, is to support and provide funding (grants, seed capital, venture capital) and business support to innovation-driven start-ups that solve real problems faced by the masses of India through technology-enabled and rapidly scalable solutions and will focus on – healthcare and life-sciences (including biotech, medical devises), sustainability (energy, agriculture, environment, water), and digital technologies (especially in manufacturing, design).
The Bharat Fund shall be managed and coordinated by CIIE at the IIM, Ahmedabad.
As informed by IIM, Ahmedabad, the process involved shall include problem identification and crowd-sourcing of solutions, Expert Screening and Independent Investment Committee and Active Mentoring and Business Support for selection of beneficiaries. Bharat Fund will also organize accelerator and grant challenge program to source ideas for specific problems that may need new effective solutions to be created.
This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha