Software industry body Nasscom on Friday announced formation of a fund with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) to help individuals and very small companies in setting up their businesses.

The anchor investors in the Nasscom-ICICI [Get Quote] Knowledge Park Innovation Fund - are Tata Consultancy Services [Get Quote], Bharti Airtel Ltd [Get Quote] and ICICI Knowledge Park, Nasscom said in Mumbai.

Nasscom President Kiran Karnik said the fund would have a corpus of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) to start with, but this could be increased to Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) in future.

There will not be more than ten institutional investors in the fund. The fund will invest in sectors such as wireless technologies, automotive infotronics, life sciences, energy conservation and medical devices.

It will invest in early stage companies and help academicians as well as researchers looking to commercialise their inventions.

Karnik said the Indian IT/BPO industry has grown ten times over the last decade. While the larger firms have the resources to invest in innovations, smaller ones fail to scale up due to lack of timely availability of seed capital.

Besides, there are certain fields where the risks are high and gestation periods long, he said. The new fund will help meet the requirement of these entrepreneurs, Karnik added.