Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Amish Parashar

Amish Parashar, venture partner and director of strategic business at Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley (YMVSV), the California-based corporate venturing unit of the Japan-based motorcycle maker, filed his first patent in high school.

A native California, with his wife and son, Parashar added that since filing this first patent he has “valued invention, the invention process, and ensuring high-impact technologies are commercialised for the betterment of our world”.

He has found a suitable home for this interest at Yamaha. Hiro Saijou, CEO of Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley, said as well as helping Yamaha Motor Business Accelerator program, Parashar had led half of its four deals and was “really the glue in the unit for us to play a team sport of innovation”.

These two deals are still in stealth, according to YMVSV’s website, but Saijou hinted that one was a “very high-profile” artificial intelligence company and the other was |pretty early but great potential” in agriculture technology. But his work goes beyond deal sourcing. Parashar, a founding member of YMVSV at its launch in August 2015, said: “My work encompasses two main foci: investments and innovation.

“To build our investment efforts I have sourced deals, led investments, and worked closely with our portfolio companies. In addition, the majority of my efforts involve building some of the other tools we as corporate VCs can deploy – portfolio collaborations, joint projects, internal and external business creation. Across both of these categories I work to foster community, especially in areas of artificial intelligence, transportation, mobility, and complex hardware systems.”

He added that his main attraction to working in corporate venturing “was towards the opportunity to make a global impact with a high-performance team and as part of a creative, technology-focused company”, and added:  “We are fortunate to have two large toolboxes – that of traditional VC as well as that of a multinational company. For every opportunity I can deploy well-matched tools which go far beyond an equity investment.

“Also, as I consider the innovation ecosystem, we look far beyond startups and into technology labs, universities, in-house projects, and even other large corporations.”

Parashar has certainly moved well between these worlds in his career. Having earned two engineering degrees from Dartmouth College, an MSc from University of London, and being named a fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health (UK), Parashar has been a faculty member at Singularity University and adviser at Stanford University and lecturer at its Institute of Design.

Just prior to YMVSV, for four years he was director of innovation at Triple Ring Technologies, a 120-person, technology creation laboratory based in Silicon Valley and Boston where he worked with large corporations and high-growth startups.

He had moved to Triple Ring from a stealth startup building a three-wheeled electric vehicle, where he had been chief technology officer. This had followed a move from founding a medical device design company, NeoVention in 2004. But his longest role has been as a board member and co-founder of global non-government organisation Natik (formerly The International Humanitarian Foundation) since 2002.

And as various parts of the ecosystem join up, Parashar is well-placed to help. He said: “A few years ago there was vigorous debate about whether CVC involvement should be allowed in deals and the motivations of corporations in VC-backed companies. The industry’s active efforts have changed this. I think most sophisticated startups and venture investors now value CVC participation and know what to expect.

“Now that the CVC industry is seen as a responsible worthy collaborative participant in deals, it is time to show even greater value. We can be patient financially and be strategically-minded investors, but can also add significant depth in the areas of highest risk for early-stage efforts. Further, we can do so in ways that are intentionally different, quicker and more collaborative than the typical methods by which our corporations operate.”