The TELUS Global Ventures Playbook: Capital, Customers, and Commercial Scale
Fund Updates · Jul 30, 2025
TELUS Global Ventures finds promising global startups and offers them more than just funding – it offers them TELUS’ massive network and expertise, and a built-in customer base.
By the time you notice the acrid smell of wildfires, the damage has already begun – something many Canadians know all too well. That’s why early detection is a key factor in limiting wildfire spread. Cameras and satellites, however, often don’t provide enough warning for fire crews to react quickly enough.
When
TELUS Global Ventures
discovered German tech startup Dryad Networks
, through its impact arm the TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good, the team recognized its widespread potential. The company uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in forests for ultra-early wildfire detection to "smell" low levels of certain gases associated with forest fires and uses AI to ensure accuracy, which has been valuable for protecting forests in Germany. However, it could also prevent TELUS’ infrastructure from being damaged by wildfire, both in Canada and abroad.“We invested in this company not only to use it ourselves, but also to sell to our customers who have equipment in similar high-risk areas,” explains Terry Doyle, Managing Partner at TELUS Global Ventures. “Railways, resource operators – they all have equipment that is at risk of destruction from fires.”
Dryad is just one example of TELUS Global Ventures’ goal to invest in the best companies and help them grow while they tackle some of today’s biggest challenges. Focusing on five key investment pillars – health, agriculture, IoT, connected consumer and impact investing – TELUS Global Ventures has invested in more than 160 companies since its inception in 2001 and is driving innovation where it will help the most and generate the best returns.
Doyle notes that, for its first 20 years, TELUS Global Ventures focused heavily on investing within Canada. As an Australian-born Canadian with extensive experience leading partnership and merger and acquisitions (M&A) activities in Europe and Asia, his mission when he joined the organization in 2023 was to “open up the aperture,” he says, and look beyond this country’s borders. Just like TELUS has a global network, TELUS Global Ventures is investing more broadly, allowing the organization to find the best companies in the world, while also bringing Canadian companies outside of our own borders.
A three-pronged approach
TELUS Global Ventures is unique in the corporate venture capital space because it’s not just an investor; its parent company, TELUS, is a future customer with a network of millions of other potential customers. “We’re very good at creating what I like to call commercial connective tissue,” Doyle says. “I describe it as three legs of a stool: we can be an investor, we can sign a commercial deal and we offer platform services.”
The result is a remarkably high commercial success rate with their portfolio companies, compared to industry averages. “Last year, we made 30 investments, and 90% of those companies have a commercial agreement with us,” notes Doyle. “And we did $34 million worth of business with our portfolio companies in 2024. That’s real money.”
Steering growth
Doyle himself has built an impressive career in corporate development and operations in both startups and with some of the world’s largest companies like British Telecom, Nokia and Microsoft. He founded Amicita Capital, an early-stage venture fund, and was co-chair for more than two years at C100, a non-profit association of volunteers devoted to supporting Canadian tech startups.
When TELUS tapped him for the leadership role at TELUS Global Ventures, he jumped at the chance to build and grow new businesses for the telecom giant. “It was the perfect fit: a combination of my skills and experience working with startups and my love of all things Canadian,” he says.
Part of what attracted him to the job was the ambition of the Global Ventures team and the support from senior leadership at TELUS. “One of the big challenges in corporate venturing is having sustained support from senior management to do what is a very long-term activity,” he explains. "[TELUS CEO] Darren Entwistle has been passionate about using capital in order to explore these new areas, so we have been active for almost 20 years, which not a lot of companies do.”
Leveraging real-world insights
As a global company that provides services to thousands of different enterprises and millions of customers, TELUS has a deep understanding of marketplace gaps that need to be filled. For example, TELUS Health has around 100,000 enterprise customers that support approximately 150 million lives, many of whom want help in areas like menopause, neurodivergence and mental health, says Doyle.
These insights give TELUS Global Ventures an unparalleled advantage in guiding its portfolio companies to develop products that address significant market demand.
TalkLife
is one example. It’s a UK-based mental health company in the TELUS Global Ventures portfolio that provides a global peer-to-peer support network for university students, facilitated by trained volunteers. “They took off because this is something that’s massively important,” says Doyle. “And surprisingly, our enterprise customers were saying, ‘TalkLife was originally built for university students, but employees face the same need: a safe space to vent with peers who truly understand their experience. TalkLife bridges that gap by combining peer-to-peer support with clinical guardrails—so when urgent or high-risk concerns arise, they’re immediately flagged and routed to the right resources.” 
Expertise and services
In addition to providing portfolio companies with valuable market insights, TELUS Global Ventures offers guidance from a team of experienced operators, investors and executives. “We possess considerable expertise in sales, and we help train the early-stage companies in our portfolio on how to sell,” says Doyle.
TELUS Global Ventures also provides foundational support and access for mobile data connectivity and an enterprise AI offering called Fuel IX, which lets startups connect their infrastructure to a library of Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI applications. “That’s our obligation as an investor, whether we have a commercial deal in place or not. How do we help this company grow and solve the problems that it’s looking to solve?
The long game
Doyle notes that while venture capital has dropped about 20% over the last two years, TELUS Global Ventures has been more active than ever. He credits this success to their ability to maximize the potential of long-term investments. “We’re more patient than traditional investors, which gives us an advantage, because the journey of being a founder is not a straight one.” The team can also nurture founders over a longer period and give feedback on how to improve and grow.
As for the long-term vision of TELUS Global Ventures, Doyle says the goal is to help expand the global presence of TELUS. “I wake up every day thinking, ‘How do I change the course of this extraordinary business?’ Five years from now, for us to have had a real impact on the world, while improving the shareholder value in TELUS, that, to me, would be an incredible thing.”
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