UST to float India-focused venture fund to back material science & product startups

California-headquartered IT services company, UST Global, is planning to float a venture fund in India, according to a report in The Hindu BusinessLine quoting its CEO Sajan Pillai. Based out of Bangalore, the fund will seek to back algorithm- and mathematically-driven software solutions and material sciences startups in exchange for equity. The corpus and the investment philosophy of the fund are yet to be finalised.

UST is already running a global VC fund, in partnership with Blumberg Capital, that has invested in six technology companies so far that include Moonraft, Kuboo and 1-Page.

Many global IT companies are running VC funds focusing on various markets including India. Last December, Pune-based Persistent Systems Ltd had launched Persistent Venture Fund, an early-stage fund to provide seed capital to companies operating in the areas of social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing (SMAC).

Nokia (Nokia Growth Partners), Google (Google Ventures), Microsoft (Microsoft Venture), Qualcomm (Qualcomm Ventures) and Intel (Intel Capital), are already running early-stage investment funds.

In April last year, home-grown software major Infosys announced that it would set up an innovation fund worth $100 million in order to focus on new ideas, products and platforms.