The fund, to be based in Silicon Valley, United States, will be targeted at Indian companies who want to set up subsidiaries or joint ventures outside the country, he told a gathering of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at a Trade Fairs and Conferences International seminar. Three big venture capital firms with India linkages have already been shortlisted for the partnership.

This apart, SVC will also set up incubators for start-up firms to fulfil the requirements of infrastructure and finance. The incubator is likely to based on the Israel model. Narain also said the Rs 100 crore corpus for National Venture Fund for Software and IT was fully tied up and that itwould be launched shortly. SIDBI has contributed Rs 50 crore, IDBI Rs 20 crore and the Ministry of Information Technology Rs 30 crore. The organisation has already started identifying suitable proposals for funding. The minimum investment will be Rs 50 lakh - relaxable in cases where the company needs a smaller investment for seed capital.

Rajesh Jog, eVentures partner and founder of technology community portal netpiligrim.com said it was probably one of the first internet ventures to make profits within a couple of months of starting operations. Netpiligrim is expected to earn $ 150,000 in the first month. The portal currently offers placement services for Indians in US companies in the technology sector. It has around 11,000 registrations from potential candidates and placed 25 of them, so far. The firm charges a fee for every successful placement.

Blueshift Internet Ventures, a subsidiary of US-based Blueshift Inc, has also set up base at Chennai in India for incubator services for internet companies.The company, promoted by Sankaran P Raghunathan, has slotted an investment $ 100 million over a period of three years. The investments will be in three areas: seed capital, co-investing venture capital and portfolio investments.

It has invested seed capital in whiteshirts.com, a company which plans to sell white shirts globally through the internet. "In Japan, 95 per cent of office-goers use white shirts. The market for white shirts in US is also phenomenal," Raghunathan said. Apart from Chennai, Blueshift plans to set up incubators at Hyderabad and Pune.

Other speakers at the seminar were J Trivedi of CDC Advisors, Gopal Jain of The View Group and Arun Pai of Arthur Anderson. On eVentures, a partnership between Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Japan's Softbank Corp, Jog said it was not a venture capital fund but an internet incubator.