Q&A with Stefan Gabriel, managing director and CEO, Hitachi Ventures
Stefan Gabriel, chief executive and managing director of Hitachi Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of Japan-headquartered electronics manufacturer Hitachi, said: “Hitachi Ventures acts as a strategic CVC investing unit from an independent fund generation with a single limited partner (LP): Hitachi.
“As a 100% daughter company, Hitachi Ventures operates independent and has its own investment committee.”
Cynthia Carroll, a member of the Hitachi Ventures board, said: “As the CEO of Hitachi Ventures, Stefan has brought an unprecedented approach to take Hitachi to another realm of performance globally. Within just over a year under Stefan’s astute leadership, Hitachi Ventures has filtered through thousands of small company ventures with the aim of investing in a select few that will substantially uplift Hitachi’s market intelligence and access, technology, people capabilities, and ultimately, bottom-line results and shareholder value. Stefan has done all of this superbly with a limited group of experts who navigate the opportunities seamlessly and flawlessly, working closely with Hitachi’s businesses around the world.”
Wolfgang Seibold, partner and chief financial officer of Hitachi Ventures, added: “Thanks to the deep strategic interaction with the business units of Hitachi, Hitachi Ventures has been able to quickly build a reputation of deep sector competence and strategic foresight in the market, and thus has become a desired collaboration and investment partner for leading startups within our target industries.”
Galina Rachenkova, a principal at Hitachi Ventures, noted: “Hitachi Ventures has been set up in a unique way (independent investment decision making, yet with a strong alignment with Hitachi’s businesses), which allows corporate venturing to be both deal-competitive in the global VC ecosystem as well as strategically significant for its LP (the Hitachi Group).
“As founder of Hitachi Ventures, Stefan Gabriel has combined the best ‘pieces to the puzzle’, based on his long-lasting learnings in a number of other industrial and technology conglomerates. This way corporate venturing can become a truly impactful tool (for any corporate player) for navigating through/into the future of innovation.”
Toshiaki Higashihara, president and CEO of Hitachi, commented: “Hitachi Ventures invests in highly innovative and early-stage startups with rapid growth potential. The purpose is to capture the occurring innovations and to support the acceleration of the movements.
“Hitachi will deepen collaborations with invested start-ups to create new markets and to achieve mutual growth. I believe CVC activities will enable Hitachi to speedily develop new business models, innovative products and deliver value to Society.”
1. How many collaborations with startups has your fund done in the last 12 months?
More than 22 collaboration projects operational between business units and startups, and more than another 20 are planned and under evaluation.
2. Plans for the year ahead:
With next Fund: special focus on environment and health sector and gain even more significance as a strategic CVC.
3. Pain points and opportunities you have encountered in corporate venturing:
For strategic CVC, both are important: Being a good, trusted investor and at the same time foster strategy dialogue and collaboration between business units and startups. In order to invest at marker rate speed, top management support and involvement, as well as collaboration funding, are absolutely needed to speed up open innovation and value-add. Targeting investments especially in the environment and health segments requires relevant ticket size.
4. What do you think all corporations or CVCs could do better to make it a stronger industry?
Get more involved in strategic dialogue and showcase the value-add to corporates with good examples of investments and collaboration projects, for example, with real customers in growing regions.
5. For colour, what did you do prior to your venture role?
In CVC for more than 20 years following a senior management track. I was president of [manufactured goods conglomerate] 3M’s CVC subsidiary, 3M New Ventures (now 3M Ventures), between 2008 and 2015.
