Shriram Group plans venture and angel fund for entrepreneurs

CHENNAI: Shriram Group, the city-based diversified business conglomerate, is in "initial stage" of floating a venture capital fund and an angel fund for aspiring entrepreneurs, a top official said today.

"We will support entrepreneurs. It may be through the venture capital (route) or angel investments. Even this morning, I met an entrepreneur. This is a pretty new area. See, these are all in starting stage", Shriram Capital, Board of Directors, Chairman, Arun Duggal, told reporters here.

The company, in a partnership with TVS Capital Fund operates TVS Shriram Growth Fund to promote private equity investments. "We are very positive about that management (to scale up the operations)", Duggal added.

On their interest in starting banking operations, Duggal said the ambition was to offer banking services at "low transaction costs".

"We want rates on deposits to be very low. See, 80 per cent of our customers are self-employed or truck owners. We want to offer better services to our customers. Our ambition is to have banking services at low transaction costs", he said.

Top officials of the Shriram Capital were here to announce the "Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism" in association with the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai.

The award is aimed at recognising the contributions made by financial journalists, he said, adding that an award function will be held here in April. Editors will have to nominate the candidates, while an independent five member jury would shortlist them, Sundararajan said.

A 'Lifetime Achievement Award' would be given to a senior journalist for contribution in the field of financial journalism over a period of 25-30 years.

The awards committee is chaired by Arun Duggal, G S Sundararajan, Akhila Srinivasan, Managing Director, Shriram Life Insurance Company Ltd, C V Krishnan, President, IFMR and Bobby Srinivasan, IFMR professor.