Lukasz Garbowski, investment director at Btomorrow Ventures, describes how the corporate venture unit helps its parent diversify away from tobacco.

Lukasz Garbowski headshot

Btomorrow Ventures (BTV), the venturing unit of British American Tobacco, is a CVC unlike the rest. While the typical aim of corporate venturing is to complement and innovate on top of its parent company’s business, BTV’s main purpose is to help its mothership transform away from its core product and into new categories that will create growth.

Lukasz Garbowski, investment director at BTV, joins the pod to talk about the unit’s unique approach, how it thinks about the new product categories that can leverage British American Tobacco’s existing strengths, the challenges involved in convincing health-focused startups that they are a good fit, and the work the unit does not just in investing but introducing non-portfolio startups to the parent through its Labs programme.

Listen here or on all major podcast platforms.

Fernando Moncada Rivera

Fernando Moncada Rivera is a reporter at Global Corporate Venturing and also host of the CVC Unplugged podcast.