Pradeep Tagare, vice president and head of investments at National Grid Partners, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.

Pradeep Tagare was working at Intel Capital when he got a call from his former colleague, Lisa Lambert, asking if he would join National Grid’s new CVC. “The first time she called me, I was like ‘are you kidding me?’ I am not going to a utility.’”

At that stage he did not think that technology could disrupt such a regulated industry. But after doing some research, he changed his mind. The new unit, launched in 2018, planned to invest in clean energy and climate technologies – before these became a hot investment area. “I took my time, researched it and found it was actually really interesting. It was the beginning of a new wave.”

Many of the National Grid Partners team come from Intel Capital, the CVC arm of the chipmaker, and it wanted to structure the unit to reflect lessons learned from working at Intel. Although the CVC fund invests from the corporate parent’s balance sheet, it has an independent investment committee. It also has a separate business development group that champions portfolio companies at National Grid.

“Once you have people dedicated to doing that, your strategic success rate goes up significantly,” says Tagare. About 85% of its investments have some engagement with the parent.

“It is a flat organisation. Every person is responsible for all aspects of the deal, from sourcing to being on the board and eventual exit.”

It also has a lean investment team of five people to avoid bureaucracy. “It is a flat organisation. Every person is responsible for all aspects of the deal, from sourcing to being on the board and eventual exit.”

Recognising that it is difficult to do business and commercial agreements with a startup and an investment in the startup at the same time, the team decided to decouple those processes. “Usually, investments are on a very short timeline, whereas business agreements take a while depending on what it is, so we separated it. We will take whatever time it takes to get an agreement done, but we will not hold up the investment.”

The CVC team’s compensation is also tied to the performance of the fund. “We believe that the people who make these investments should have skin in the game financially,” says Tagare.


The Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry. 

These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession. 

See the full 2025 Powerlist here.