Masahiro Kinoshita, president of Panasonic Ventures, the $100m corporate venture capital unit of the Japan-based electronics company, since its formation in April last year has been a notable pioneer in its structuring.
He said when Japanese companies established a CVC, it was extremely difficult to have a scheme of securing large enough amount of money that “does not need approval from Japan” or show synergy with existing business units and instead seeks financial return.
He added: “Our CVC accomplished all these above and we are proud as a pioneer. It took three years from initial concept to implementation, now I am leading the planning and establishment of the project.”
Kinoshita had previously led the M&A team at Sanyo Electrics from 2003 to 2012 but after joining Panasonic to 2015 was involved in many cross-border transactions. These included the sale of its healthcare business to US-based private equity firm KKR, “even though it had stable business earnings,” although Panasonic kept 20% of ownership to benefit from any upside in the spinout.
After this M&A deals, he joined Panasonic’s venture strategy office in mid-2015 as a general manager at headquarters working for Mototsugu Sato, who was promoted to senior managing executive officer in July last year.
Kinoshita said: “CVC enables us to provide management resources as well as investment for future growth of the startups.”
And while his short-term ambition is to have a successful first fund, and then future ones, he is already looking ahead to establish CVC funds in Europe within the next two to three years.
In the US, Panasonic has also become the cornerstone investor in new venture capital fund Conductive Capital.
Carey Lai is the managing partner of Conductive and spoke at Global Corporate Venturing’s Synergize conference in New York City last October, having built an excellent track record over the past 14 years in venture capital at IVP and Intel Capital.
Panasonic has invested in Silicon Valley startups for nearly 20 years since 1998, helping these firms grow by providing a wide array of in-house technologies and human resources, and under Kinoshita, its Ventures unit has all the elements for success.