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Ketan R. Patel

Investment Catalyst | Private Equity Investor | Transforms Engineers into Entrepreneurs & Innovations into Successful Investments

Jacksonville, Florida

Overview 

Ketan R. Patel is an accomplished Investment Catalyst and Private Equity Investor, known for transforming engineers into successful entrepreneurs and innovations into profitable investments. With a background in corporate governance, restructuring, and investment management, he currently serves as the Managing Partner at Chimney Ridge, LLC, where he focuses on venture formation, capital investment, M&A, and corporate development. Highlights of his career include roles as a Managing Director at NexStar Partners, where he specialized in early-growth, mobile & wireless, and venture-capital investments, and as a Principal | Partner at New Venture Partners, leading spinouts, divestitures, and venture incubation.

Work Experience 

  • Director

    2021 - Current

    Director - Specialized and Asset Finance - Principal Investments. Equity investment lead for the Americas. Investment interests include TMT, Semiconductors, Industrial Technologies, Sustainable Waste Stream/Recycling Technologies, Energy Efficiency Technologies, Water/Wastewater management, Zero Emissions Mobility, Distributed Power Generation. Interested in asset heavy technologies and business models in need for customized financing solutions across the capital stack.

Macquarie Infrastructure Company Owns, operates and invests in a diversified group of infrastructure businesses.

  • Managing Partner - Venture Formation, Capital Investment, M&A, Corporate Development, Innovation

    2018

    Boutique consultancy advising clients on innovation strategy, including Venture Formation and Incubation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Divestitures and Spinouts, industry best practices, and operations and strategy challenges. Provide subject matter expertise related to venture formation, development and growth, investments, risk assessment, and governance via direct or third-party engagements. Provide growth, sales/marketing, and capital raise advisory services to entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. Projects cover industries such as FinTech/InsurTech, Security, AI/ML/Data Analytics, IoT, Enterprise Software, Deep Tech.

  • Managing Director - Early-Growth, Mobile & Wireless, Venture-Capital Investments

    2014 - 2018

    An early-growth, corporate-sponsored venture capital fund focused on mobile and wireless innovations. Responsible for all aspects of fund management including, but not limited to, fund formation, crafting and positioning fund vision and strategy to corporate stakeholders, co-investors, and top talent, recruiting and training an investment team, building and managing portfolio of investments in areas such as IIoT/IoT, Security, AI/Data-Analytics, Media, Infrastructure, Robotics, Connected Cars, Autonomous Vehicles. Please see PROJECTS section for portfolio of investments.

  • Technical Advisory Committee

    2014 - 2016

    InterDigital’s Technical Advisory Council, formed in 2010, advises the company’s senior management team on strategic technical priorities and direction, potential new markets and product opportunities, product, service and technology program initiatives, and additional technology matters where the Council brings relevant insights.

InterDigital Communications is a mobile technology firm that designs and develops digital wireless technology solutions.

Raised $675,000,000.00 from Cowen Group.

  • Principal | Partner - Spinouts, Divestitures, Venture Incubation and Investments

    2006 - 2014

    New Venture Partners establishes close, long-term relationships with global technology corporations to commercialize innovations through spin-out ventures. We take the lead in identifying, developing, forming, and funding these spin-out ventures to produce sustainable, stand-alone companies and great returns for our corporate partners and investors. We have a proven track record of transforming technologies from corporate R&D labs into successful spin-outs. The New Venture Partners team has founded and funded more than 60 technology ventures from the R&D labs and business units of global technology corporations including Lucent/Bell Labs, British Telecom, Philips, Agere, Boeing, Intel, Telstra, Avago, and others. Through our specialized, hands-on practice, we offer a systematic process for commercializing innovations and an alternative path to market that creates a bridge between technology corporations and traditional venture capital. Please see PROJECTS section for portfolio of investments.

New Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm specializing in corporate spinouts, and seed-, early-, and mid-stage investments.

  • PMTS, Applications Engineering

    2002 - 2004

    Cavium was a semiconductor company offering the largest family of network and e-commerce security processors. Cavium IPO 2006 (Stock symbol: CAVM). Responsibilities at Cavium crossed the domain of marketing/product management, technical sales, and applications engineering and support. Marketing/Product Management: Productized the NITROX-II family of security processors. Assisted in the characterization of new markets for the processors by performing high-level feasibility analyses for various applications. Helped define the product features based on customer requirements and feed-back. Technical Sales/Account Management: Was instrumental in securing and actively managing tier-1 customers (such as Cisco, Nokia, Fujitsu, Furukawa, and EMC) that resulted in the generation of a significant portion of the company's annual revenues. Applications Engineering and Support: Coordinated with the engineering team to define and deliver custom software releases. Provided level-1 customer support to secure design wins. Generated customer collateral.

  • Senior Field Applications Engineer

    2001 - 2002

    Empowertel Networks was a semiconductor company offering comprehensive VoIP convergence processors. Empowertel was acquired by IPUnity in 2002. Migrated career from engineering/product development to sales/marketing/field-support roles. Secured and actively managed customer accounts for the MxP1070 convergence processor in Western-US, China, Japan, Korea, India, and Israel.

  • Engineering Design Lead - Network Processors Group

    2000 - 2001

    Tiara Networks was a provider of multi-service wide area network access and aggregation platforms. Nortel Networks acquired Tiara Networks (then called Tasman Networks) for $99.5 million in 2005. Defined and implemented the micro-architecture for an OC-3 Uplink chip and a Giga-bit Uplink chip. Managed the implementation and verification of the micro-architecture and directed the chip verification and validation efforts, including system integration and debug.

  • MTS, Core Design Team

    1999 - 2000

    MIPS was a leading provider of industry-standard processors and processor architectures. Served as the unit integration lead for the Instruction Fetch, Instruction Dispatch, and the Instruction Execution clusters of the R20K and R20Kc microprocessors. Responsibilities included circuit and logic implementation of various functional blocks within the different clusters through to cluster level integration and characterization.

  • MTS-II, Microprocessor Design Team

    1997 - 1999

    Design engineer responsible for circuit implementation for the Instruction Fetch cluster for the R10K, R12K, and R12Ks microprocessors.

Silicon Graphics provides workstations for conceptual design analysis and simulation of 3D objects.

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