Why 117-year-old Hong Kong utility CLP seeks partnerships and stakes in tech start-ups
Cost efficiency, better customer satisfaction and Hong Kong’s smart city ambitions drive power supplier
CLP Holdings, the larger of Hong Kong’s two electricity suppliers, is looking for more partnerships with universities and strategic investments in start-ups with technologies and ideas that can help the 117-year-old utility become more cost efficient and better at meeting customer needs.
The company started to make such investments last year and has so far ploughed in about US$10 million into start-ups through venture capital funds, chief executive Richard Lancaster said in an interview.
“We are working with a number of venture capital funds and universities, which helped direct us to innovative ideas and let us get involved in the start-up stage,” he said. “We bring our industry know how, while they contribute with new ideas.”
He said CLP was, however, very selective and would only invest in relatively mature start-ups that are ready to implement or scale up their product or service offering. He said the company had formed strategic partnerships in Israel, Australia, Hong Kong, mainland China and Silicon Valley in the United States.
“Our strength is not in picking which innovations and ideas will work, but rather on rolling them out in the electricity industry,” he said, adding that the partnerships had led to a number of pilot projects in data analytics, which had helped the company better predict electricity demand and facilities maintenance needs.