Gurjeet Grewal

Gurjeet Grewal grew up between London and East Africa, in a family of entrepreneurs whose businesses ranged from sugar factories to timber exports.

His own career initially took a more conventional route.

He moved through financial services and investment management, eventually working at the level where, as he puts it, he was travelling the world and deploying billions.

Then he swapped global finance for an early-stage business.

Grewal joined Octopus Electric Vehicles in 2018 as one of its first employees, moving from investment into the operational reality of building a company. He started as Director of Operations, became Chief Operating Officer and stepped into the CEO role in 2025.

The problem the business was trying to solve was practical: electric cars were improving quickly, but switching to one could still feel expensive, fragmented and complicated.

Octopus EV set about simplifying the whole experience – bringing the car, charger and energy together, and using salary sacrifice to make the economics work for more drivers.

That model has now helped more than 50,000 people switch to electric through thousands of UK employers. Under Grewal’s leadership, the business has also expanded into Germany and moved further into vehicle-to-grid technology, where the car becomes part of the energy system rather than simply drawing power from it.

Grewal left a career built around deciding where capital should go.

His second has been about what happens when you stay close enough to the problem to build the answer yourself.