Arun Chetty has joined National Grid Partners as senior partner as it boosts its digital tech investment capabilities.
National Grid Partners (NGP), the strategic investment arm of energy utility National Grid, has hired former GCV Emerging Leader Arun Chetty as vice-president and senior partner.
Chetty succeeds Andre Turenne, vice-president of investments for NGP, who sadly passed away earlier this year, and will focus on software and hardware that can modernise the grid. He tells GCV he is especially comfortable with hardware products such as sensors, robotics and internet-of-things technologies – “anything that has kind of a deep tech component”.
“It’s got to deliver both financial return and really make a substantial difference for National Grid,” he says. “That gives a sense of satisfaction that you’ve contributed to something meaningful for the industry, as opposed to just making money for the company.”
Chetty made the Emerging Leaders list in 2021, during a 20-year stint with chipmaker Intel’s corporate venture unit, Intel Capital, where he worked his way up to managing partner. He has invested more than $300m in 45 startups in his career, achieving a 6X cash on cash return.
“I’ve spent many years at Intel Capital and I’ve been through lots of up and down cycles,” he says. “We tweaked that organisation over the years and refined it into a really great machine, and there have been a lot of learnings in that process. I would love to be able to help implement some of those key learnings where it makes a difference.”
The CVC work bookends a short period as a senior investment partner at Natcast, the non-profit organisation set up to run National Semiconductor Technology Center, the research and prototyping hub formed by the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act in 2022.
Natcast was subsequently forced to lay off most of its staff in September this year, when the US Commerce Department refused to supply the $7.4bn in payments pledged by the previous administration.
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