India IT services major Wipro has set up a $100 million venture capital (VC) fund to invest in early-to-middle stage technology start-ups across the world, reports Business Standard citing sources. The report says that the initiative is being driven by Wipro’s Chief Strategy Officer Rishad Premji and that he has already started exploring opportunities in start-ups focused in niche technologies like data, open source and industrial internet among others. An Economic Times report suggests that the corporate venture arm will be part of the company's recently formed independent business unit Change the Business Services and its head Anurag Srivastava will be an important member of Rishad’s team. Others in the team include Jagadish Velagapudi who currently heads strategic programs for the company and Haripriya Rama Iyer who is part of Wipro's corporate strategy team. Change the Business Services unit was formed earlier this year as an independent unit and it apparently offers opportunities for employees to experiment with ideas in emerging areas like machine learning and platform-based services, as indicated by a Times Of India report. Wipro CEO T K Kurien had told the publication that they will also setup an accelerator for machine learning. Wipro Investments: Wipro has previously made couple of investments in startups. In June last year, it invested $5 million in a machine-to-machine and Internet of Things solution provider Axeda Corporation. Axeda was acquired by PTC for around $170 million earlier this week. The company had also invested $30 million in the Big Data Science and Predictive Analytics Company Opera Solutions as part of a strategic partnership in May…
