Investors are ready to plow up to $20 million into joint startup projects between India and Russia, Skolkovo vice president Igor Bogachev told the TASS news agency Friday.
“At Skolkovo alone we have 70 registered venture funds that want to invest in [Russian-Indian] innovation projects,” Bogachev was quoted as saying. “We could be talking about investment from $10 million to $20 million by the end of the current year.”
Bogachev, the executive director of Skolkovo’s IT cluster, was speaking on day two of the IndiaSoft industry conference in New Delhi, where 15 Skolkovo startups exhibited their innovations.
Skolkovo VP Igor Bogachev. Photo: sk.ru
“We believe there’s huge potential for the creation of join Russian-Indian high-tech enterprises,” Bogachev said. “The strengths of Russian developers lie in the ability to think up completely new products, while for Indian developers it’s actually creating and producing them once the blueprints are there.”
News of the potential investment in joint projects comes a day after Skolkovo and the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC) of India signed an agreement to create a cluster of Indian IT firms at Skolkovo.
IndiaSoft is an annual international conference featuring progressive IT companies and venture capital investors, held by ESC. More than 160 companies from 70 countries are involved in the February 12-14 event this year.
Among Skolkovo’s participants at IndiaSoft are: 3d-tek, a videowall developer; inventory managers GoodsForecast; cloud video surveillance platform Ivideon; CAD component developer SZD Labs; ABBYY Language Services; real-time positioning systems developer AlterGeo; banking graphical user interface developer CashOff; unified communication and videoconferencing company Freeng; software developer Kintech Lab; robotics firm Navirobot; data transmission specialists OTS; structural monitoring innovators SODIS Lab; video infrastructure and business intelligence companySynesis; cloud communication developers Zingaya; and mobile data traffic specialists Telum, developer of the Ranberry 4G/LTE cell.