Bharti Airtel, the Indian telco with the largest subscriber base of 75 million, has set up a fund with a corpus of $44 Million (Rs. 200 crores) to fund innovation and entrepreneurship in the telecom sector. Some details from the FAQs: -- There's a cap of $4.4 Million (Rs. 20 Crores) on each deal. -- The fund is open to Early Stage ventures that are registered in India -- They're primarily targeting ventures with a commercial business model, not non-profit -- Sectors that they're looking at - M-commerce, value added services, IP-based technology, lifestyle and location-based services You may use this form to apply. The release is fairly low on details. A Change In Mindset? This move is quite ironic, and also indicative of a change in mindset. So far, operators have been squeezing startups with poor revenue shares and download "leakages", while VC have been funding them, taking a punt that the situation will improve. Startups kept raising money, VCs kept taking a punt, operators kept benifiting from this vicious cycle. Because of this situation, VCs became more circumspect about the direct-to-consumer mobile VAS business. Future Factory Three years ago, Airtel launched "Future Factory", intended to test the waters for new innovative services, with Centres of innovation in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While the initial mandate for Future Factory was to experiment with applications related to Mobile Entertainment, Commerce and rural applications, we're learned that they're now also looking at social applications, with the agenda of engaging the…
