First venture fund to be launched in Armenia

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The Armenian government and private sector will allocate USD3mln each to setting up the first venture fund in the country.

Director of Enterprise Incubator Foundation Bagrat Yengibaryan said today that the fund is likely to start operating in late 2012 and will finance start-up IT companies.

According to him, boosting entrepreneurship in the sphere is of utmost importance especially if taking into account the current potential.

“I will cite the contest of ideas announced by Nokia as an example where 400 of 944 ideas were presented from Armenia”, said Bagrat Yengibaryan.

He also noted that they work on attracting foreign venture funds to Armenia.

The Director of Enterprise Incubator Foundation stated that the growth in IT sector has stabilized having made 22-23% annually over the past years. Advisor of the Armenian Minister of Economy Vahe Danielyan said in his turn that each specialist of the sector annually creates a value added cost at USD36 thousand on average.

Bagrat Yengibaryan expressed the confidence that Armenia changes its positioning on the global IT market from being IT services outsourcing into a country creating new assets.

“In particular, Microsoft Innovation Center in Armenia has been recognized one of the best among analogous centers in the world, D-Link and National Instruments opened their regional centers in Armenia and Nokia opened mLab, the laboratory of mobile solutions”, said Bagrat Yengibaryan.