The investment committee of the St. Petersburg's Pre-Seed Investment Fund has approved three first projects for $480,000 financing, innovation and venture news source UNOVA reports.

All the three companies – Innovatsionnaya Stomatologiya (Innovative Dentistry), Teplocom and Svezhie Resheniya (Fresh Solutions) – are the residents of the business-incubator Ingria.

The Pre-Seed Investment Fund started working earlier this year. Its assets total $4.2m, allocated from the federal budget and budget of St. Petersburg.

“Ingria has suggested a new format of interaction between city business-incubators and funds – it is the infrastructure partnership. In St. Petersburg we saw the lack of financial institutes that could provide financial aid to entrepreneurs at the start of their business – from emergence of an idea to meeting a venture investor. Most of Ingria’s residents are such projects, that is why this Fund is needed for growth of such companies,” Dmitriy Stepkin, the director of business-incubator Ingria, said.

“Ingria’s projects are “well-packed” and are of interest for pre-seed investment from the Fund. For financing such projects we need to see clear business-plans, high-quality expert assessment and the potential of presence of intellectual property. Within all these parameters Ingria prepares its projects very efficiently, that is why it is an infrastructure partner of the fund. Besides, Ingria provides post-investment accompanying of the financed projects,” Mikhail Rayak, the Fund’s executive director, said.

According to the experts, the Pre-Seed Investment Fund occupies a niche that has been vacant until recently at the market of financial institutes of the city - it is the place between business-angels, who finance ideas, and private venture funds, as well as the Seed Investment Fund of the Russian Venture Company, who invest into projects that have made their first steps in teh market. The Fund invests $27,000 to $160,000 into the projects and gets up to 25% shares in the charter capitals of the financed firms. The Fund then exits the projects within three years.