Q&A with Anand Kamannavar, global head, Applied Ventures
Omkaram “Om” Nalamasu, chief technology officer (CTO) and senior vice-president (SVP) of semiconductor technology provider Applied Materials and president of its corporate venturing arm Applied Ventures (AV), said of Anand Kamannavar, the unit’s global head: “Anand has been a great leader in reinvigorating our ventures organisation as a force in deep tech global investments and making ventures an indispensable corporate strategic tool for profitable growth.
“Under Anand’s leadership, AV has significantly expanded its scope and reach to collaborate with entrepreneurs across the globe with value-added investments to accelerate the market success of startups in the materials to systems sector.
“This has included doubling the investment dollars, leading investment syndicates, taking board of director positions, making investments in public companies while continuing building strategic partnerships with the portfolio companies with good financial outcomes. In addition, Anand has taken an active role to drive best practices to drive synergies between ventures and business development organizations across the enterprise.”
1. Milestones achieved at your unit:
This (2020) was a year of multiple changes at Applied Ventures, led the charge to drive the following with support of the Applied board and Applied CEO Gary Dickerson and Applied CTO and AV SVP Om Nalamasu.
- Increased fund size from $50m a year to $100m a year and increased investment size from $10m to $25m per company.
- Started taking lead investor role.
- Started taking board of director role in portfolio companies (in addition to board observer role)
- Invested in public companies via PIPE (for example, Nanexa)
- Re-invested in China after nearly a decade (Spectrum Materials)
- Multiple companies became Unicorns (Rockley, Solid Energy) set for IPO (Solid Energy – on board, eXo Imaging – on board, Ultivue – on board, Nanosys, Rockley Photonics)
- Increased number of leads flows by three-times (250 a year in 2019 to 750 leads a year in 2020)
- Applied Ventures is a key partner for the corporate’s divestment activities
- Drove visibility of AV team members (awards) and focused on hiring minorities (women, LGBTQ) with the team. The majority of new team hires belong to minorities group.
- Training for the organisation: board of director training, CFIUS and trade restrictions
- Led sign-up of parent organisation’s business development team for GCV Institute courses (more than 20 people signed up globally)
- Sponsored and spoke at major VC events – GCVI Summit, TiECON, Embedded AI, FTIX, ASTRA 2020
2. Pain points and opportunities you have encountered in corporate venturing:
- Driving successful collaborations between BU and portfolio companies
- Managing investments with low strategic investment
- Managing global investments from corporate headquarters in the Bay area
3. What do you think all corporations could do better to make it a stronger industry?
- Better awareness of partnering effectively with CVCs among financial VCs
- More proactive inclusion of women & minorities in the hiring process as well as investment
- Good tools for collaboration between CVCs
4. For colour, what did you do prior to your venture role or in your spare time?
- In spare time, coach Quizbowl (Jeopardy) teams.
- I like to explore new places by going for runs in these places.
