Sberbank has announced plans to set up a venture fund that will focus on IT projects in the financial sector, CNews reports.

The venture fund will initially come in at $100m. Later its capital is expected to grow to $500m through attracting international partners.

The fund has been registered as Limited Partnership in accordance with British procedure. It will be managed by Troika Ventures, the venture division of the investment company Troika Dialogue.

“The new venture fund will focus on start-ups at the growth stage aimed at development of new information and communication technologies for financial entites. The fund plans to invest not only in Russian start-ups but also in the most promising innovations all over the world,” Sberbank said.

In addition to monetary funding, Sberbank will offer start-ups “expertise of its Center of Technological Research that will help the companies develop new technologies and seek commercialization in accordance with the bank’s investment strategy.”

Voctor Orlovsky, a senior vice-president of Sberbank supervising the IT direction, said that portfolio companies would be interested in Sberbank “as an investment partner, as well as the largest consumer of their technologies.”

Sberbank’s initiative received positive feedback from experts. “The Russian market of young TMT (telecoms, media, technologies) companies is not so well funded as that of electronics, new materials and alternative energy, and Sberbank’s money will come in very handy. Of course, this money will not be for start-ups but rather for mature companies with first sales and in need of growth capital,” said Yury Ammosov, a professor at the department of innovations and high technologies of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.