GCV’s James Mawson interviewed TDK Ventures‘ Nicolas Sauvage about his unit’s track record since it was founded in 2019.
James Mawson, founder and chief executive of Mawsonia, the publisher of Global Corporate Venturing for which he is editor-in-chief, spoke with Nicolas Sauvage, managing director of TDK Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of Japan-headquartered electronics manufacturer TDK Corporation.
Mawson pointed out that while TDK Ventures is a CVC newcomer, it is “shaking up the market and adding value to the portfolio companies”.
TDK Ventures has 19 active portfolio companies, 15 of which were invested out of its first yet-to-be-fully-deployed $50m fund in 2019. The unit formed a $150m second fund in April this year, expanding its existing focus to cover areas such as clean technology, advanced materials, industrial, robotics, energy, autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles and health technology.
Mawson mentioned the deals tracked by GCV Analytics showed that during the covid-19 pandemic, new corporate venturing units entered the picture unlike what was predicted.
In his conversation with Claudia Zeisberger, a senior affiliate professor of decision science at business school Insead, Sauvage felt half of the deals conducted during the pandemic had involved new CVCs born during this time.
Sauvage said: “The corporations are trying to explore how to learn about the market, ecosystems and new technologies, and they have identified that putting together a corporate VC fund is a good tool to have in the innovation toolset.
“If you are an entrepreneur and have received funding from a CVC fund from April 2020 onwards, more than likely it has been from a new unit,” said Sauvage. He added that these new corporate VCs are seeking a lighthouse in the community.
Sharing his own experience, he said he had only learned about CVC in 2018 and he immediately realised how important it was to create a community to make it a sustainable industry and increase professionalism.
Paul Holland from venture capital-as-a-service group Mach49 was among the industry veterans that guided TDK Ventures. In addition, Sauvage said TDK executives were entrepreneurs at heart and were keen on the idea of a corporate venturing vehicle after he laid out the reason why they should have one.
Sauvage said: “For new market and new technologies, you have M&A and R&D teams looking at each area, but no unit is looking at these two combined – that is a big gap in the wave of disruption, which is where CVC comes in.”
TDK president and CEO Shigenao Ishiguro gave the green light to the CVC programme in December 2018 because he considered it was exactly what the corporation needed. Sauvage attended GCVI Summit the month after and was able to meet all the right people there. TDK Ventures was approved in April 2019 and launched officially three months later.
To learn more about the “golden nuggets” from Sauvage’s Corporate Venturing Insider podcast series in association with 500 Startups, please click here. GCV’s podcast analysis is available here.
