Ireland has picked Damien Callaghan, strategic investment manager at Intel Capital (and left in the picture), to chair the advisory board of the country’s €500m ($700m) fund of venture capital funds.
Brian Cowen, the Irish Prime Minister, launched the Innovation Fund – Ireland in New York as part of a plan to have venture capital funds invest and bring portfolio companies to the country.
In a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, Cowen said: "Damien served on the Innovation Taskforce so is ideally placed to advise on the operation of the fund and whether government policies to position Ireland as a global innovation hub and the vision we set out in ‘Building Ireland’s Smart Economy’ are being achieved."
The Innovation Taskforce in its report earlier this year said 120,000 jobs could be created by 2020 by following its strategy.
Half the money for the fund will come from the Irish state with the remainder expected to come from private sources, similar to an innovation fund launched in the UK last year.
Cowen said: "The Ireland of the future will be a smart, high-value, export-led economy. It will have some of the world’s leading research-intensive multinationals, a number of which will be Irish-owned. It will be a centre for advanced manufacturing. It will have thousands of innovative small and medium enterprises. These companies will be creating the products and services of tomorrow for a world market."
In the same week, India also said it had been looking at setting up a R3,000-crore ($639m) venture capital fund to directly invest in the country’s pharmaceutical industry.
Ashok Kumar, secretary for pharmaceutical department in the Indian Ministry of Chemicals, said the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy was finalising the bid document and the expression of interest for setting up the fund will be issued this month.