26 – 100 in alphabetical order: Lak Ananth, Next47
Lak Ananth, who was vice-president of strategy and corporate development and managing director at US-based enterprise IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise until October 2016, joined Germany-based conglomerate Siemens as managing partner of its €1bn ($1.2bn) Next47 corporate venturing unit launched in the same month.
Since then, he has thoroughly reorganised the unit. Among recent changes were Ralf Schnell, former head of Siemens Venture Capital before its effective incorporation into Next47 at its launch under Ananth, becoming head of private equity at Siemens Financial Services in April last year, as well as the departures of Susana Quintana-Plaza, a partner who ran Next47’s London office, and Swati Dasgupta, a director of external innovation, both in August last year.
New recruits included Chris Barchak, a UK-based venture partner who joined from VC firm Conor Venture Partners in July 2018; Eddie Kang, a US-based principal who joined from active growth equity firm Telescope Partners in October 2018; and Moshe Zilberstein, an Israel-based investor who joined from venture and growth equity investment firm Norwest Venture Partners in January this year.
The changing of the guard at Next47 as it positions itself as more independent of Siemens’ business units and an evergreen fund able to reinvest profits from its €1bn ($1.2bn) fund. The fund has a three C’s model – providing capital, creating intrapreneurs through a partnership with accelerator Techstars and being a catalyst to business units to open markets for startup portfolio companies.
Its most recent investments included a $20m series C round for Germany-based electric vehicle charging technology developer Ubitricity in March, after having previously provided an undisclosed amount in November 2017, and a $25m series C round for Israel-based supply chain software provider Bringg in January, having co-invested with enterprise software provider Salesforce, beverage producer Coca-Cola and mobility technology producer Ituran.
Ananth reports to Joe Kaeser, Siemens’ CEO. For his Powerlist profile in 2017, Ananth said: “Collaborating with Techstars is an important and exciting step for Next47 and Siemens. We are excited to provide Siemens employees access to the proven Techstars platform globally.
“As a Siemens subsidiary, we have both an external and an internal vision. The external vision is to be the world’s premium address for ventures between corporates and startups, as well as a role model for open innovation. The internal vision is to shape Siemens’ core businesses of tomorrow.
“A decisive factor will be the team’s ability to find opportunities and engage with the Siemens ecosystem. We have the ability to form a great business from just an idea in a short time. For instance, we have enabled a robotics business to develop eight generations of hardware within less than a year. We can offer access to some of the world’s most sought-after clients, including Siemens.”
Before heading Next47, Ananth developed and built the Hewlett Packard Pathfinder organisation, bringing together innovation strategy, venture investments, acquisitions and partnerships.
Earlier, Ananth worked in strategy and corporate development at Cisco Systems and was instrumental in the $2.9bn acquisition of Starent Networks, the $1.2bn acquisition of Meraki, and an investment in Control4.
Next47 – a reference to 1847, the year Siemens was founded – has remade itself now for the parent company.
