After being featured in GCV’s Powerlist 2017 and named a Rising Star last year, Christophe Defert has been nominated again this year.
Defert is a vice-president at Centrica Innovations, a corporate venturing arm of UK-based energy utility Centrica. Having spent the past eight years in the company, he led the initiative to set up Centrica Innovations in 2017 and now leads the unit with a £100m ($125m) corpus.
Jonathan Tudor, technology and strategy director at Centrica, said in his nomination of Defert: “He has taken the fund from inception to completion of five deals this year, with integration of two of them into key projects for us. He has also built a great team around him in Tel Aviv, New Jersey and Houston.”
Defert said: “I am glad that we got up and running under a structure that I believe is pretty good for a corporate with allocated funds and an independent investment committee.”
So far, the unit has participated in four US-based investments in its first year – a $5.76m series A round for energy-focused blockchain service LO3 Energy, a $83m series C round for electrical generator producer EtaGen, a $40m series B round for in-home assistant service provider Hello Alfred, and a $18m series B round for industrial cybersecurity technology developer Indegy. It also took part in a £9m ($11.5m) early-stage funding for Israeli cloud-based electric vehicle-charging platform developer Driivz.
Defert started his career as an investment banking analyst at financial services firm Merrill Lynch and an associate at investment management firm TowerBrook Capital Partners. Before joining Centrica, he completed an MBA in management at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
