Youth Employment Summit Inc, a US-based non-profit organisation on Wednesday launched a global fund to provide seed capital and business development support to young entrepreneurs across the world.
The corpus size of the fund stands at $425,000 to begin with, which would be raised to $25 million in the next three years, YES Inc president Poonam Ahluwalia told reporters in Mumbai.
Besides sponsoring entrepreneurs through seed funding and loans, the fund would provide focused business management and technical skill training to the youth, which would enable them to produce and present viable business plans that would attract local financing.
The goal of the YES Fund is to build a coalition of partners all over the world to work on creating markets...unleashing entrepreneurship, she said.
The fund would provide seed capital to young aspiring entrepreneurs, who want to open their own start-ups in the IT sector, Ahluwalia said adding they should fall under the age group of 18-35 years.
Other targeted sectors for youth entrepreneurship would be renewable energy, water and sanitation, rural development and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.
Besides seed funding, it would also provide loan and loan guarantee, Ahluwalia added.
Talking about the sponsors she said, $150,000 commitment has come from Swiss Development Corporation and global software giant Microsoft has given $100,000, while garment manufacturer Levis Strauss given a grant of $25,000.
