Pradeep Tagare, head of corporate venture investing at National Grid Partners, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our Powerlist this year.
Pradeep Tagare is head of corporate venture investing at National Grid Partners, the investment arm of UK-based utility National Grid. The unit manages a venture capital fund set up in 2018 with $250m, to which the parent company committed an additional $150m in April 2021. National Grid Partners has invested in around 40 companies, collaborating with startups at varying stages of development and splitting its partnerships between energy and technology businesses.
Lisa Lambert, founder and president of National Grid Partners, says: “We are investing in and deploying technologies across National Grid’s networks to enhance resilience and reliability, while more easily integrating renewable energy. Our company’s ambition is to become the most intelligent, cleanest transmission and distribution network in the world.”
More than 70% of its portfolio companies have strategic engagements with National Grid
National Grid Partners has been a lead investor in most deals it has been involved with, and more than 70% of its portfolio companies have strategic engagements with National Grid. The venture unit’s main investments focus on the internet-of-things and grid modernisation, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and analytics, security and energy management.
Among its recent investments are its participation in the $26m series B raise for climate change risk analytics firm Risilience. It also played a lead role in a venture round of undisclosed size for Visionary.ai, an image-signal processing specialist. Based in California, Tagare joined National Grid Partners in 2018 after spending most of the previous decade as investment director at Intel Capital India. He has a master’s degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
