Girish Nadkarni, who leads Switzerland-based industrial company ABB’s corporate venturing unit, could arguably be mistaken for a journalist, if his recent intellectually inquisitive attendance at the International Business Forum’s Corporate Venturing and Innovation Partnering conference in Newport Beach, California, is representative. At least two executives commented that he had been the most vocal person in the audience over the three-day conference.
Nadkarni’s frenetic questioning is, he says, part of a strategy of deliberate engagement with as many different parties in the market as possible, after the group was founded three years ago.
He said: “We have engaged actively with VC [venture capital] firms on how we should work with each other and the role corporates should play. We have also done so with folks such as you, who are thought leaders, and promoters and spreaders to make sure our ideas get communicated globally. We have also done our bit with academia, with various universities. Three have written articles or case studies about us. We have been quite active spreading our message and looking to learn from the experience of others. This process is interactive and not just one way traffic.”
Nadkarni’s energetic approach is respected by at least some of his contacts. One market observer, who asked not to be named, said: “I believe they are one of the leading [corporate venture capital] arms in their sector. Girish really is a topclass investor. I have heard very positive things on him from a variety of stakeholders – co-investors, entrepreneurs and so on.”
ABB Technology Ventures has been relatively active. Nadkarni said: “We have deployed just south of $150m, including commitments to various funds and allocations for follow-ons. This is a pretty aggressive rate, although it is not like Google Ventures [which is deploying $300m a year, also after starting in 2009].”
As well as a number of direct investments, the firm has backed three venture firms – Emerald Technology Ventures, Tsing Capital and another undisclosed fund.
The corporate venturing unit has strategic objectives, with its investments generally being earmarked as potential acquisitions of ABB, although it attempts to act like a financial investor in its approach to the investment.
Nadkarni said: “We often go in with the sense, although we never know for sure, that the start-up would make an interesting acquisition once the technology and market risk is behind it. However, we never ask for special rights or privileges and prefer to act as a pure financial investor. Getting a right of first refusal damages the company’s ability to sell itself at a good price in the event we decide not to acquire the company. We see no point in doing that. Furthermore, VCs and management are not happy about capping theirupside, and as a result the only deals which would come
to us would be where they were worried about an exit. We do not want to be adversely selected.”
Nadkarni enjoys the variation of corporate venturing compared with financial venture capital. He said: “If you are a financial investor there are not many flavours you can come in. The only variables are stage, sector and geography, so you are some combination of three flavours – vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. With corporates the flavours are varied. Some are only early-stage, there are those like IBM, which do not invest in companies
directly but only go through funds, there is Chevron, which invests not in order to acquire but to assure themselves of access to good technology as users. We are somewhere in the middle.
“We are stage agnostic and geography agnostic. We like to invest direct but have invested in three funds to learn about new technologies or geographies. Our approach is not really defined or boxed in, but we will do it if it makes sense for us.”
The group has yet to make an exit, besides the write-off of solar company GreenVolts, although Nadkarni says the group has already been successful in terms of some of its strategic goals. He said: “Success for us is defined a little differently. It is not ‘how much money did you make?’ We have not had any exits so far, but we have had a number of other returns on our investment.”
He pointed to investments in PowerAssure, Validus DC, Pentalum and Aquamarine as successes, for the
strategic value the deals have produced for ABB.
He said in the case of PowerAssure, it had allowed ABB to become more deeply involved in data centres and leverage some of its process control applications which had been repurposed for the datacentre market.
Nadkarni said GreenVolts, ABB’s first write-off, was a less costly way of getting exposure to a sector ABB had to be involved in, where it would alternatively have needed to make an acquisition. The group said it discontinued its funding of GreenVolts because an oversupply of, and plunging prices for, photovoltaic modules had hurt demand. He said: “We had no idea what prices in China would do. The whole industry was caught by surprise. We are not going to fight the tide. From a financial perspective the deal did not go well but it made sense to dip a toe as an insurance policy, as we could not afford to stand on the sidelines.”
Nadkarni explained his group would make investments that could be important for ABB, even if financial investors had worries about achieving a strong return. He said: “Financial VCs have a luxury. If they do not like a sector nobody compels them to invest. You do not always have this luxury if you are in a legacy business. You have to take seriously the protection of assets, even if other investments might have a bigger return.”