Jean-Marc Bally has worked in corporate venturing as managing director at Aster Capital and the corporate venturing unit from which it spun out, Schneider Electric Ventures, since 2000.
Aster became independent of France-based industrial group Schneider Electric in 2010, and is backed by two other corporate backers, equipment provider Alstom and chemicals company Solvay, Rhodia.
Bally, whose deals include SolaireDirect, Tronics, ConnectBlue, Jet Metal Technologies, Optiréno and Lucibel, said: “Why did we go for a multi-corporate fund? It was a reaction against the difficulties some venture capital firms and some start-ups were perceiving with a mono-corporate venture fund. The idea was not to do things differently from before but to do it better. We have a close relationship with each of the corporates in the fund.”