Hyderabad, June 13 (KNN) The Telangana government is planning to set up a Life Sciences Infrastructure Fund (LSIF) with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore and also a ‘Telangana Industrial health Clinic’ (TIHCL), to help sick MSME units in the state revive.

LSIF will be a first-of-its-kind fund in the country which will be used to create a modular plug-and-play specialised infrastructure for pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices industry.

In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with Cerestra Advisors, a private equity firm.

The PE fund has already bought Alexandria Knowledge Park in Hyderabad for about Rs 400 crore to build an office portfolio on R&D clients. The Knowledge Park houses large tenants such as Novartis, Vimta Labs, Bharat Biotech, Biological E, Lonza among others.

The state has also proposed a Pharma City and the phase-1 is being developed across 8,200 acres, with 6,300 acres of land already under the possession of Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (TSIIC) and acquisition of the remaining land is expected to be completed shortly.

Further, the state is also setting up ‘Telangana Industrial health Clinic’ (TIHCL), a new financial initiative specially focussed for the growth of MSMEs and revival of sick units.

It is being set up with support from TSIDC with a corpus fund of Rs100 crore of which the state government will be contributing Rs10 crore, the central government is expected to provide a grant-in-aid support of Rs 50 crore and the rest through banks and financial institutions.

The fund will operate as a fintech company and will handhold enterprises to ward off the compliance risks for the partnering commercial banks.