Lietuvos Energija Signs the Agreements with Innovation Fund Managers
A State-managed energy company group Lietuvos energija completed its preparatory work and today signed a fund incorporation agreement with Contrarian Ventures. The Innovation Fund management and development of the start-ups’ accelerator operations was entrusted to the international and highly experienced team Contrarian Ventures that was selected from five teams participating in the public tender.
The fund to be incorporated by Lietuvos energija together with the selected team became the first corporate venture capital fund in the Baltic States. The fund intends up to EUR 1 million per year to invest in start-ups and in the course of three years the accelerator is expected to facilitate the development of at least 15 start-ups.
“By incorporating this smart-energy-oriented venture capital fund we seek to attract new ideas and external talents. By cooperating and providing the appropriate conditions to address different energy-related challenges, we will be able to use the potential of the talents by developing the areas that will create the largest value in the future energy sector,” says Dr. Dalius Misiūnas, Chair of the Board and CEO of Lietuvos energija.
The Innovation Fund and the energy start-ups accelerator will invest in smart-energy projects: smart grids, renewable resources, bioenergy, small generation, smart houses, large data and analytic, electronic services, as well as other energy-related solutions. The operations of the fund will also engage the accelerator – the authors of selected business ideas will be granted a workplace at Vilnius Tech Park offices, access to the broadest network of Lithuanian and foreign experts, highly competent professionals and the infrastructure of Lietuvos energija. The activity of the Innovation Fund will start from the idea selection stage the purpose of which is to attract the most appropriate business ideas not only from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, but also from other Nordic and East European countries. The selected business idea teams that still do not have their idea prototype will be eligible to a pre-seed stage investment of up to EUR 50,000. More advanced teams may expect up to EUR 300,000 or in exceptional cases even larger seed stage investment.
When incorporating this specialised corporate venture capital fund, first ever in the Baltic State, Lietuvos energija was assessing the expertise and experience of the local and international venture capital funds’ markets and was consulting with the European financial institutions, market players, and experts. The Fund will also seek to attract other investors’ resources. The Fund will be investing its resources only in energy-related start-ups. The structure of the Fund, its costs, and profit distribution will be regulated according to the standards effective in the market.
“Our team welcomes the opportunity to work together with Lietuvos energija and be first in establishing the first corporate venture capital fund in the region in cooperation with such financially strong investor and partner. We believe that our experienced international team brings a unique offer that will be very attractive to start-ups to the market and we can expect substantial competition,” says Rokas Pečulaitis, Executive Partner of Contrarian Ventures.
The team of the Contrarian Ventures fund managers is made up of seven experts from Lithuania, Israel, and the Netherlands. In aggregate, all the participants of the team have participated in more than 100 corporate development processes, executed more than 70 investment projects, and successfully realised about 15 companies. Each of the partners has accumulated expertise of no less than five years in smart energy business development and realisation, venture capital fund management, business idea acceleration, and investment management. One partner of the team is a co-founder of StartupBootCamp, one of the largest start-up development programmes in the world. Holland and Israel are ranked as the countries with extremely well-developed start-up ecosystem in the international start-up community. Thus, the expertise, knowledge, and professional connections of the partners from those countries will be largely referred to for the purpose of successful integration of the Lithuanian innovations and start-up ecosystem in the international business environment. Venture capital funds of the type also operate in other EU countries where energy companies have been investing in innovations successfully for years.
