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The state's principal fund investing in high-tech companies has reached a milestone--for the first time recouping all the money it granted an emerging company, and then some.
The 12-year-old Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund received $2.6 million from Marcadia Biotech Inc., to which it previously granted $2 million.
Carmel-based Marcadia last month was bought by Swiss giant Roche, for an undisclosed price. Marcadia was co-founded five years ago by former Eli Lilly and Co. scientists Gus Watanabe and Richard DiMarchi. It develops drugs to treat diabetes and obesity.
It's a small return for the taxpayer-supported 21st Century Fund. But it validates a decision made about five years ago by the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which oversees the fund, to attach more strings to the money it grants to emerging tech companies.
"If we give you some of the 21 fund money, we expect you to grow the company here in Indiana. And if you hit the ball out of the ballpark ... we expect to get a little back," Mitchell Roob Jr., CEO of the IEDC, said of the previous policy changes now bearing fruit.
The 21st Century Fund initially was geared to demonstrate that technology developed at the state's universities could be commercialized. Grants from the fund could help companies attract private...