About us
We invest in Founders with breakthrough ideas
Our mission is to merge the best of both worlds: startup innovation combined with IMI’s capabilities in solving complex problems for markets with long-term sustainable growth. Through IMI’s Venture Studio, founders have access to dedicated resources, a team of experts who are committed to their success, and early funding when they launch their new venture.
IDEATION
Unlock your next venture potential by brainstorming innovative ideas that address real-world problems.
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Quickly validate multiple concepts
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Get insider market knowledge
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Get access to industry experts
VALIDATION
Test your ideas with potential customers and run mini pilots to validate the problem-market fit.
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Data-driven, customer insights
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Focus on proven market demand
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Real-world pilot testing
ACCELERATION
Accelerate your venture’s growth through strategic partnerships, funding access & expert mentorship.
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Initial venture funding by IMI
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Founders maintain independence
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Access to IMI global resources
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Ongoing venture support
EVERY VENTURE WE BUILD IS:
VALUES-ALIGNED
Ventures can leverage IMI’s corporate assets such as customer networks and engineering expertise, while simultaneously enhancing the IMI’s competitive position by exploring adjacent markets that can complement our core business capabilities.
SCALABLE
Our ventures have an 18-month path to raise funding from external investors as a true sense of market validation, including establishing a dedicated founding team, creating the product, commercial traction, and growth model.
FUTURE-PROOF
We build ventures with defensible competitive advantages whether through market position or technology or IP. The patient timeframe we give our ventures to scale allows them to build sustainable business moats rather than quick wins that IMI’s competitors can easily replicate.
How we venture build with founders
6-step success:
IMI venture building roadmap
We’ve developed a comprehensive six-step process to provide a competitive edge for your venture building journey to maximise your startup success.
01.
Ideation
We explore new ideas, identify market opportunities, and develop innovative concepts that address unmet needs and market gaps. Together with founders, we validate these ideas through brainstorming sessions, market research, feasibility studies, customer interviews and insights from IMI experts.
02.
Market Validation
Before we fund and launch the new venture, we conduct rigorous market validation to assess the viability and desirability of the venture. We analyse market trends, conduct competitor analysis, gather customer feedback and run pilot tests with potential customers to validate market demand and problem-market fit.
03.
Business Model Design
We assist founders in designing sustainable and scalable business models that align with their goals and objectives. Whether it’s subscription-based models or value-based pricing strategies, we help entrepreneurs choose the right business model to monetize their products and services effectively.
04.
Early Funding
Funding is often crucial for scaling a venture and achieving long-term success. Hence, IMI Venture Studio offers the first round of funding for the new ventures we develop and help founders in preparing compelling pitch decks, connecting with potential investors, and navigating the fundraising process.
05.
Go-to-market
Developing a robust go-to-market strategy is essential for successfully launching a new venture. Our goal is to increase the scalability of the venture by leveraging IMI’s global resources. We work with founders to define their target market, identify distribution channels, and create marketing campaigns that effectively reach and engage their customers.
06.
Scaling and Growth
Scaling a venture requires careful planning, execution, and optimization. We provide strategic access to our worldwide network and support to entrepreneurs as they scale their operations, expand into new markets, and enhance their product offerings. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs achieve sustainable growth and maximize their impact in the market.
VENTURE BUILDING TOPICS
Process Automation
Instrumentation
Advanced Manufacturing
industrial Heat
Climate Control
Green Energy
Decentralized Energy
Energy Efficiency
Low Carbon Solutions
Clean Fuels
Energy Storage
Renewables
Our venture portfolio
Every venture we invest in is futureproofing the energy and industrial sector
ThermoTune
ThermoTune is transforming how manufacturing plants optimize steam use and cutting fuel consumption and emissions across production lines.
This is because manufacturing plants waste 30-50% of their heat energy – a staggering inefficiency that hurts our environment and costs billions of dollars.
With already strong early results from deployments in Southeast Asia, ThermoTune is rapidly helping manufacturing plants transform both their bottom lines and environmental impact today.
HySights
The world’s first and only ratings agency for New Energy, HySights aims to accelerate the energy transition by de-risking investments in low-emission bio- and hydrogen-based fuels.
By leveraging its proprietary vertical AI tools, HySights provides unique, industry-leading data and insights for stakeholders across the New Energy global supply chain.
What Founders are saying
“IMI Venture Studio has been instrumental in ThermoTune’s journey from concept to scaling. They worked with us to ideate and rigorously validate our business, ensuring we built on a strong foundation. Beyond that, they helped us raise capital, connected us with the right commercial partners, and opened doors to investors who believe in our mission. What truly sets them apart is how founder-friendly they are, providing guidance, resources, and networks without ever losing sight of the founder’s vision. IMI doesn’t just invest in ventures; they help build them alongside you.”
Nimantha Baranasuriya
CEO and Co-founder, ThermoTune
Radershan Suguneswaran
CTO and Co-founder, ThermoTune
“IMI Venture Studio didn’t just provide funding, they helped us deeply understand the problem space, stress-test our assumptions, and translate insights into a product strategy that actually works in the field. Their network opened doors to early customers to run live pilots and gather real-world feedback that’s impossible to replicate in a lab. We could focus on building the right product while knowing we had a team behind us that understood the technical side of scaling a venture.“
Greg Mittman
CEO and Co-founder, HySights
“The support of IMI Venture Studio has been invaluable in accelerating our go-to-market within the complex ecosystem of low-carbon energy transformation. IMI’s deep industry experience, technical resources, and local market insights helped HySights move rapidly through innovation, product testing and customer validation-momentum that is crucial for a successful venture.”
OUR STARTUP ECOSYSTEM EVENTS
Explore our events where we advocate for our ventures, shares thought leadership, and connects with founder talent. We welcome partnerships and collaborations—reach out on LinkedIn to connect further!
Ready to build your next breakthrough venture?
There has never been a better time than right now. Apply now to be a founder and build your venture with IMI.
About IMI plc
IMI plc is a global specialist engineering company that creates breakthrough solutions. We are curious and like to solve problems, partnering with our customers to solve the demands of today and prepare for the challenges of tomorrow. We embrace innovation and care about outcomes that are good for business, everyday life and making a better world – creating lasting impact for everyone. We design, build and service highly engineered products in fluid and motion control applications.
We focus on five market sectors: Industrial Automation, Process Automation, Climate Control, Life Science and Fluid Control, and Transport. IMI plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
IMI Global
IMI plc is a global specialist engineering company creating breakthrough solutions. We design, build and service highly engineered products in fluid and motion control applications.
IMI Process Automation
Process Automation’s engineering solutions enhance efficiency, sustainability and safety of severe applications, and creating solutions for cleaner energy.
IMI Industrial Automation
Industrial Automation is enabling smarter, safer, more productive and sustainable businesses. This include factories, production lines and warehouse operations.
Breakthrough engineering for a better world
We combine our deep engineering knowledge with strong applications expertise to develop solutions for the most acute industry problems globally.
11,000+
employees worldwide
50
countries represented
FTSE 100
A constituent of FTSE 100
$2.74B
Revenue
Venture Studio Team
Marco Placidi
CEO, IMI Venture Studio
With a keen eye for trends, Marco has a proven track record in driving innovation and growth, leading the venture studio to transform bold ideas into successful ventures
Michelle Woo
COO, IMI Venture Studio
Michelle has extensive startup management and expertise running venture studios, ensuring execution and strategic growth across all ventures within our portfolio.
IMI Venture Studio – the venture arm of IMI plc
The venture arm of IMI plc
IMI’s Venture Studio is dedicated to building new ventures to futureproof the energy and industrial sector to help create a better world for all.
Our mission is to merge the best of both worlds: startup innovation combined with IMI’s capabilities in solving complex problems for markets that have long term, sustainable growth.
Address
29 International Business Park,
Singapore 609923
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