Hyderabad,June ,2007:Andhra Pradesh Investment Fund a new company with a corpus of US $ 7 million with sole objective to help participate in Andhra Pradesh companies in economic development of the country is launched here in a function in city recently by Minister of IT & C, Government of Andhra Pradesh Mr. R. Damodar Reddy. The launch function is also graced by Dr. C.S. Rao, Advisor — IT and Mr. S.K. Joshi, Principal Secretary, Government of A.P. The fund is being pooled up by those philanthropic NRI investors who want to give back to the country which invested in them and contributed to the success levels they attained.

The Andhra Pradesh Investment Fund promoted by Mr. Venkatesh Tadinada and Mr. Pradeep Shenoy. Both US based entrepreneurs with roots to the state of Andhra Pradesh. While Venkat Tadinada has successfully promoted a couple of start-ups like Solivar Inc, an IT Company offering solutions to the insurance and healthcare verticals, Mr. Pradeep Shenoy, cofounder with Venkatesh Tadinada in Solivar is an engineer and alumnus of IIM Calcutta with over 23 years experience served earlier as the Global CEO of SQL Star International. Both these successful US based entrepreneurs together with their friends in US wanted to pay back to their mother land by setting up a fund to create an avenue for Indians, or more specifically Andhraites to offer them an opportunity to participate in the growth and development of the State.

The Fund to be created in two phases $ 2 million in 2007 and $ 5 in 2008, the sole objective of it is to invest in companies that are based in Andhra Pradesh and to be deployed in sectors like Information Technology, Bio-technology and other Knowledge based services which are aligned to the State’s vision to transform it into a Knowledge Society, informed Mr. Venkatesh Tadinada, CEO of Andhra Pradesh Investment Fund while talking on the occasion of its launch.

Speaking further, he added that these funds are proposed to be raised through an "Investment Club", where investors can invest amounts ranging from $25,000 to 1,00,000 which will go into the creation of the proposed corpus.

The Fund is a means to help India’s talent get a chance to demonstrate their achievements on a world stage and derive the most financial advantage out of them. Besides, just funding, we will hand-hold the budding entrepreneurs from concept to commercialization, declared Mr. Venkat.

The funders will bring together with their expertise to help young entrepreneurs. I belong to Andhra Pradesh I want to pay back to my mother land for whatever I am today. My colleague Mr. Pradeep Shenoy, though do not hail from this state, spent a significant part of his working life here. Hence, we both joined hands together with some more would like to help nurture young talent. It is our endeavour to see that Andhra Pradesh remains in forefront in all-round development.

So far Andhra Pradesh has been a prime mover of the overall economic development of the country. Long before the country as a whole had embraced the Information Technology culture, the state of Andhra Pradesh had already set in motion, through its Vision 2020 master plan, the process to become a world leader in Information Technology and other sectors. The state envisioned the high technology services sectors to create 18 to 20 million jobs by the year 2020 with each such job creating, on an average 4 more jobs. By the year 2020, high technology services are expected to contribute a staggering Rs 5,40,000 crore to the state’s Gross Domestic Product(GDP) compared to the Rs 35,000 crore in 1995. At the half way point of this 25 year perspective, it is appropriate to say that Andhra Pradesh is well poised to translate Vision 2020 into an incredible reality.