NGP Capital principal Ossi Tiainen joined NGP Capital, the corporate venture arm of the Finnish telecommunication company Nokia, in May 2016. In eight years, he moved from being an associate in 2017, to vice president in 2019 and now principal.
Tiainen is featured on the Emerging Leaders list for the second time, having been nominated again by NGP Capital’s co-founder and partner, Paul Asel, for his contribution to sourcing and leading many of the units’ “most promising investments in Europe and Israel”.
Tiainen brings to the table many years of experience in strategy. Before joining NGP, he was an analyst and consultant, which honed his “conceptual view of the market,” says Asel. He worked at August Associates between 2013 and 2016, followed by brief stints at Synocus and Network Ten, allowing him to bring experience in business planning, portfolio strategy, commercial due diligence and supply chain optimisation to new portfolio companies.
“Tiainen brings to the table many years of experience in strategy. Before joining NGP, he was an analyst and consultant, which honed his “conceptual view of the market”.”
Tiainen focuses on investment opportunities in enterprise software, smart logistics and cybersecurity. He studied industrial engineering, economics and software engineering at Aalto University in Helsinki, where he held several assistant teaching positions. Some of his past investments include supply chain visibility platform Shippeo, enterprise computer vision company Scandit, software-defined endpoint architecture company Hysolate and online
food-delivery platform Deliveroo.
NGP Capital backs early-stage B2B companies from series A onwards in Europe, the US, Israel and China in enterprise software, industrial tech, cybersecurity and infrastructure. Since 2005, NGP Capital has invested in 107 companies and has exited fully or partially from 62 investments. The company says on its website that the 2020s will be a decade of “the great convergence” – bringing together the physical and virtual worlds and “producing the next generation of iconic technology companies”.
See the full list of GCV Emerging Leaders for 2024 here.