Centrica has announced a new venture, Centrica Innovations, that will identify, incubate and accelerate new technologies and innovations. The new business unit will include a venture fund of up to £100 million to invest in start-ups, in exchange for access to technology and entrepreneurial capability and resources.
The company’s existing £10m social entrepreneurship fund, Ignite, which began funding enterprises in 2014, will now sit within Centrica Innovations.
Centrica Innovations will focus on:
- Placing scouts in key technology hubs – Seattle, Houston, London, Cambridge, Tel Aviv;
- Delivering a new venture fund to invest in start-ups;
- Incubating and accelerating in-house and external innovations;
- Embedding an innovative culture across Centrica.
CI will also support existing in-house ventures, such as Io-Tahoe, a data lake software and services company that allows organisation and management of data from multiple structured and unstructured databases from British Gas’ 14 million energy customer accounts, accelerating development by providing tools and methodologies to support rapid growth.
Iain Conn, Centrica’s group chief executive, said: ”The launch of Centrica Innovations is an important step in identifying and responding to the changing needs of our customers. The new venture will ensure innovation is embedded across our business and will allow us to invest in the technologies that can support our customers into the future. We are already investing £1.2bn to 2020 in our Connected Home and Distributed Energy and Power businesses, helping residential and business customers to take control of their energy and save money.
Centrica Innovations will be led by Charles Cameron, Centrica’s Group director of technology and engineering.
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