New Delhi: The Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) will finalise its guidelines for funding the entertainment industry including exploring possibilities of venture capital support within the next two months. "Entertainment industry is a high risk business...We need to protect the interests of the bank.... We will identify the areas and formulate guidelines within two months," IDBI chairman and managing director, Mr GP Gupta told PTI. Mr Gupta said the bank was exploring the option of using the venture capital route to finance some of the areas but clarified that the bank would not set up a separate venture capital fund especially for the film industry. "We have a venture capital scheme within IDBI and have no plans to set up a separate VC fund for the entertainment industry," he said.Asked about the corpus to be set aside for funding projects in the industry Mr Gupta said that "there is no requirement for a fixed corpus...Funds will be given as per requirement of the projects". The government last week issued notifications declaring films as concerns under the IDBI Act, to allow easy finance and bank funding to the entertainment industry. Mr Gupta said guidelines would be formulated using in-house expertise and added "it is a new area and if required we may consult international companies, which have experience in the field". "There are two areas which we have to consider.
One is asset related funding, which includes renting of equipment and other physical assets, while the other area is soft funding, which includes script writing and acting," Mr Gupta said. He said the bank would finance all activities related to the entertainment industry including television and added that it would also talk to the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) so that the latter can take on funding some of the smaller projects. "We plan to initiate talks with SIDBI to finalise those areas which can be funded by the bank," the chairman said.
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