Creating Ventures From Within

Jasdeep Sawhney and Dan Northover of InMotion Ventures, the venture studio of JLR, on building ventures that orbit the mothership.

With Jasdeep Sawhney and Dan Northover

From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures

52 min · 6 June 2025
Creating Ventures From Within episode artwork
What we cover

4 things this conversation gets into

  1. 01Orbiting the mothership: close enough to benefit, far enough to move
  2. 02A five-phase playbook from ideation to scale-up
  3. 03Protecting brand equity in a luxury market
  4. 04When to spin a venture back into the core
The guests
Jasdeep SawhneyManaging Director, InMotion Ventures

Jasdeep Sawhney is Managing Director and Dan Northover is Venture Principal at InMotion Ventures, the venture studio of Jaguar Land Rover. They build ventures that orbit the corporate mothership, strategically aligned but free to move at startup speed.

Dan NorthoverVenture Principal, InMotion Ventures
About the host
Davide RitortoFounder, Open Road Ventures · Innovation Management, Automobili Lamborghini

Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.

He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.

The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.

Show notes
Read the full show notes

🎙️ Welcome to the sixth episode of The Corporate Venturing Podcast!


How do you build new ventures inside a global corporate—and still move with startup speed?


In this episode, I sit down with Jasdeep Sawhney (Managing Director) and Dan Northover (Venture Principal) from InMotion Ventures, the venture studio of Jaguar Land Rover, to explore how they’re building successful ventures that orbit the corporate mothership—strategically aligned, but free to move fast.


We discuss:

🚗 What makes InMotion Ventures a hybrid between a studio and a corporate builder

🛰️ Orbiting the mothership: how to stay close enough to benefit, far enough to stay agile

📊 Their five-phase playbook: from ideation to scale-up

🧱 Building ventures while protecting brand equity in a luxury market

📈 Business model innovation—from ride-hailing to car subscriptions

🧠 Lessons from collaborating across legal, brand, and engineering teams

🎯 Knowing when to spin a venture back into the core—or keep it independent


Whether you’re setting up a new studio or refining your corporate venture model, this episode cuts through the theory and shows how it works on the ground—structure, agility, governance, and stakeholder buy-in included.


Resources:

• Open Road Ventures

• Bundl Venture Club


If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow, rate, and share The Corporate Venturing Podcast.


Stay curious, keep innovating—and we’ll see you next time!

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