Arshad Sayed, managing director and head of corporate development, RT Ventures, is one of our emerging leaders in corporate venturing in 2023.
Arshad Sayed previously worked on the strategy team of Rio Tinto but made the full leap into corporate venture investing under a year ago, when he cofounded RT Ventures for the mining company.
RT Ventures’ mandate — coming directly from the CEO and CFO — is to invest in technologies that help Rio Tinto reach its net zero goals.
“We have made these commitments on our climate position and obviously we will need to do things differently. How are we going to do this if we are looking internally? The answer is to find ways of working with the broader ecosystem,” Sayed told GCV.
Sayed — who in his early career ran a social venture programme at the World Bank — runs a lean team of four but manages to cover a lot of ground by keeping the investment process quick. There is no investment committee, just Sayed and the chief science officer, who assess investments on technical and business merits.
“We have made these commitments on our climate position and obviously we will need to do things differently. The answer is to find ways of working with the broader ecosystem.”
Before joining Rio Tinto, Sayed was the chief executive of Global Connect, where he did strategic consulting. He also worked for five years at Peabody Energy in China where he was responsible for market entry and growth strategies.
He seeks investments that can quickly start joint projects with Rio Tinto or its suppliers, and one big challenge has been to cut down the time it takes to set up a project with a startup to just three months.
RT Ventures initially planned to make just four or five investments a year but has already backed seven companies. The fund has so far kept a low profile, but it is aiming to deploy around $300m over the next seven to 10 years.
Sayed is looking for alternatives to fossil fuels, taking part last year in the $99m series B round for Electric Hydrogen, which is developing more efficient hydrogen electrolysers. Other investments the unit has recently made are in carbon capture and storage, biomass and green cement.
Producing “green” iron is also another focus, as is the circular economy and using less water. Since its founding, RT Ventures has collaborated across corporate venture units, financial VCs, academic institutions, national labs and research centres.
See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2023 here.
Maija Palmer
Maija Palmer is editor of Global Venturing and puts together the weekly email newsletter (sign up here for free).
