Ravi Mulugu has been a senior investment director at UL Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of safety and regulatory services provider UL, since June 2018. He helped establish the systems and processes needed for scaling the venture practice and hired other key members of the team.
He focuses on energy, cybersecurity and analytics-related investments at UL Ventures, and he is on the board of four startups: advanced battery analytics platform operator Voltaiq, cybersecurity technology developer RiskSense, cyber risk assessment and insurance trading tool developer Arceo and vision technology developer Brodmann17.
Simin Zhou, managing director of UL Ventures, said in her nomination: “Ravi joined us last year [2018] from Siemens Ventures, now called Next47 [industrial technology and appliance producer Siemens’ CVC subsidiary], where he spent six years investing in many areas that are also relevant for UL Ventures.
“He understands the nuances of corporate venturing and how to work effectively with internal business units and stakeholders. He plays a crucial role in bringing and implementing best practices and helping me in building a solid corporate venturing practice. Ravi leverages both his engineering and business experience when evaluating startups and advising entrepreneurs and our portfolio companies like him.”
Mulugu is an electrical engineer by training and worked on the operating side in different roles for eight years before entering the venture space, having invested in a number of renewable energy startups because the corporations he was working for were mission-driven toward a cleaner energy future and this would not have been possible if he had worked for a financial VC, he said.
He added: “We are piloting several approaches to increase the engagement between business units and portfolio companies. Sometimes collaborations happen easily and sometimes they are difficult to take off. We are learning best practices from other CVCs who have more success in this area.”
Mulugu holds a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. He also holds an MBA from the Anderson School of Management of University of California, Los Angeles.
