SoftBank has played a major role in the startup industry across India. Apart from being the major stakeholder in various startups, SoftBank was recently in the news for the rumored Snapdeal Flipkart merger. In its first capital commitment, SoftBank raised a whopping $93 billion, with Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

This commitment would eventually put the founder in charge of the biggest investment vehicles for the technology. The Fund had an initial commitment from high profile backers that include Apple Inc, Qualcomm and Foxconn. This fund is committed to a minimum $100 billion deal with private as well as public companies. It aims to develop internet and connectivity across the world.

The Vision Fund aims to seek long term investments across businesses that aim at innovation. By tapping outside investment, the prospective investments by SoftBank will be more ambitious than the ones supported by them in the past. SoftBank relied on borrowings from the domestic telecom operations, which paid for the startups in India, China and the US. This is seen as a bold investment move in transformative technologies and if the fund is consistent with this strategy, it will help build and grow the foundational platforms for the next stage of the Information Revolution.  This Vision Fund is unprecedented in technology and it will be interesting to see how it is deployed. The Fund has been active even before the first close, this shows a steady flow of investments linking the fund to various companies. SoftBank’s CEO has pledged to generate 50,000 new jobs in the US by investing $50 billion across various startups and companies. The Vision Fund will be based in West London’s Mayfair and will be headed by an experienced management team.

SoftBank has made investments in various companies including Yahoo, Alibaba and Supercell Oy. It is expected that the new fund will follow a similar strategy of backing technology companies at all stages across the sector. This fund has eased the strain on the balance sheet of the Japanese company and its appetite for deals across different sectors will increase. SoftBank has made bold investments in the past which have led to a debt load of $130 billion, which is one of the heaviest in Japan.  With a well laid out strategy, the fund will help business grow and develop strong technology, robotics, mobile apps, telecoms and more.