News-Kategorie: Venture Capital

Munich — Munich-based start-up Price f(x) secu­res another EUR 23m in an expan­sion of its Series B finan­cing round. The round was led by Digi­tal + Part­ners and Bain & Company. Talis Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted again. LUTZ | ABEL accom­pa­nies Price f(x) in the exten­sion — as alre­ady in the previous finan­cing round.

Foun­ded in Munich in 2011, the start-up offers a modu­lar SaaS solu­tion for opti­mi­zing price manage­ment (PO&M) and pricing (CPQ) for busi­nesses of all sizes. The expan­ded funding was led by Digi­tal + Part­ners, a Euro­pean B2B tech­no­logy inves­tor, and manage­ment consul­ting firm Bain & Company. Talis Capi­tal, the initial inves­tor in the Series A round, also made a further invest­ment, brin­ging the total invest­ment in Series B to EUR 48 million.

With the support of the inves­tors, Price f(x) 2020 would like to focus more on the further deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form func­tions, expand the func­tion­a­li­ties, bring more products to the market and also deal more inten­si­vely with sales and marke­ting. The company conti­nues to anti­ci­pate steady inter­na­tio­nal growth — also on a coope­ra­tive as well as stra­te­gic level. Accor­ding to the company’s own infor­ma­tion, the value of the company has alre­ady tripled in the last 12 months. In the current finan­cing round, Price f(x) was again accom­pa­nied by the VC experts from LUTZ | ABEL. In addi­tion to Dr. Bern­hard Noreisch, Jan-Phil­ipp Kunz provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice.

Advi­sor Price f(x): AG LUTZ | ABEL Rechts­an­walts PartG mbB (Corpo­rate Law, Venture Capi­tal / M&A)
Dr. Bern­hard Noreisch, LL.M. (Part­ner), Jan-Phil­lip Kunz, LL.M.

Geneva/ Tel-Aviv — Tel-Aviv based venture capi­tal firm Crescendo Venture Part­ners is laun­ching its new VC fund plan­ned to raise $80 million-$100 million. The new fund has comple­ted its first closing and is plan­ning to have its final closing in the first half of 2020. The fund is mana­ged by a group of seaso­ned venture capi­ta­lists with over 75 years of cumu­la­tive expe­ri­ence on both sides of the table, part­ne­ring with the Switz­er­land based Crescendo Group, which mana­ges client assets in excess of USD 3 billi­ons of dollars from across its eight offices in Geneva, London, Guern­sey, New York, Miami, Madrid, Hong Kong, Monte­vi­deo and most recently Nassau. — Crescendo has a long track record of inves­t­ing in as well as mana­ging attrac­tive and unique private market invest­ment solu­ti­ons inclu­ding, but not limi­ted to venture capital.

The fund will invest in early stage Israeli soft­ware start­ups in fields such as big data, AI and machine lear­ning with an empha­sis on soft­ware that trans­forms tradi­tio­nal sectors such as agri­cul­ture, educa­tion, cons­truc­tion, health­care and indus­try. The Fund began opera­ti­ons during 2019 and has alre­ady made its first invest­ment when it led the A round of Light­ico, an Israeli startup that has deve­lo­ped an auto­ma­tion solu­tion for the last mile of the custo­mer jour­ney in cont­act centers.

Crescendo Venture Part­ners is led by Zvi Schech­ter, Dr. Yuval Avni and Tal Mizrahi, form­erly part­ners at Giza Venture Capi­tal, toge­ther with Mark Kavel­a­ars. Zvi Schech­ter is an early pioneer in Israel’s venture capi­tal indus­try and was the co-foun­der of Giza Venture Capi­tal in the 90s. Schech­ter led invest­ments in ground­brea­king compa­nies, inclu­ding compa­nies which comple­ted successful exits, such as Tele­gate, Cyota and Soluto. He also led invest­ments in growing compa­nies, like WalkMe, one of Israel’s fore­most ‘unicorn’ start­ups, where Zvi was invol­ved since the company’s incep­tion. Dr. Yuval Avni served as a part­ner at Giza Venture Capi­tal in Israel and in Giza’s over­seas funds. During 2015–2019 he mana­ged Beta-O2, a startup company he successfully led to a turn­around and to sustained growth. Prior to beco­ming an inves­tor, Dr. Avni had been a surgeon and a graduate of the Tech­nion Medi­cal School. In recent years he has been a visi­ting lectu­rer on entre­pre­neur­ship and fund­rai­sing at the Tech­nion and Tel Aviv Univer­sity. Tal Mizrahi also served as a part­ner in Giza and has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in invest­ments, finance and the legal aspects of venture funds in Israel and abroad and high-tech compa­nies. Prior to joining Giza, Tal served as VP Finance at PortAut­ho­rity, which was acqui­red by Websense for appro­xi­m­ately $100 million. Mark Kavel­a­ars is a venture part­ner in the fund and brings with him over 20 years of mana­ge­rial expe­ri­ence in tech, marke­ting and invest­ments. Kavel­a­ars is a mana­ging part­ner and co-foun­der, at Swan­laab Venture Factory, Spain, a €60 million venture capi­tal fund inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive Spanish companies.

Dr. Yuval Avni, mana­ging gene­ral part­ner at Crescendo Venture Part­ners, notes: “Despite the huge poten­tial of start­ups in early stages, there is a gap between the finan­cing needs of these compa­nies and the amounts inves­tors actually invest in this stage. Crescendo will bridge this gap, with its team that will propose to entre­pre­neurs a combi­na­tion of expe­ri­ence in invest­ment and manage­ment of start­ups, along with a broad network of connec­tions with compa­nies and inves­tors in Europe, Latin America and Asia who are inte­res­ted in inves­t­ing in Israeli soft­ware compa­nies.” Avni added that “as a team that accu­mu­la­ted expe­ri­ence in invest­ments and also in manage­ment of start­ups, we under­stand the entrepreneur’s view­point, take a profes­sio­nal and friendly atti­tude towards entre­pre­neurs and make quick decis­i­ons regar­ding compa­nies we encounter.”

Zvi Schech­ter, gene­ral part­ner at Crescendo Venture Part­ners, adds: “We are curr­ently riding on the posi­tive momen­tum of the cycle for Israeli start­ups. We are constantly meeting with excep­tio­nal entre­pre­neurs with great ideas who can create a real trans­for­ma­tion in a wide range of tradi­tio­nal indus­tries in various sectors. Crescendo will place at the dispo­sal of those entre­pre­neurs a combi­na­tion of capi­tal, busi­ness expe­ri­ence and a network of global cont­acts with poten­tial custo­mers, part­ners and inves­tors from around the world, who are year­ning to connect and coope­rate with inno­va­tive start­ups from Israel.”

Photo caption: Crescendo Venture Part­ners’ leading team from left to right — Mana­ging Gene­ral Part­ner Dr. Yuval Avni, Gene­ral Part­ners Zvi Schech­ter and Tal Mizrahi

Tel Aviv — Israeli start-up Hi Auto will unveil the world’s first audio-visual commer­cial solu­tion for back­ground noise-free spea­ker recor­ding and speech enhance­ment. The company has comple­ted a seed phase with a $4.5 million invest­ment led by Israeli auto importer Delek Motors and Hi Auto’s acting chair­man Zohar Zisa­pel (pictu­red).

Other inves­tors included Allied Holdings (holding company of auto importer Cham­pion Motors), Singa­pore-based Gold­bell Group, a leader in indus­trial vehicle sales and leasing, and Plug & Play, which works with auto­mo­tive part­ners to innovate.

Hi Auto plans to use the seed stage funds to complete deve­lo­p­ment of its first product, launch distri­bu­tion and expand its team.

Speech reco­gni­tion plat­forms are curr­ently strugg­ling with the problem of poor reco­gni­tion rates in noisy envi­ron­ments, such as when there are child­ren in the back seat of a car, an ambu­lance drives by, or it is raining heavily. Hi Auto’s audio­vi­sual solu­tion elimi­na­tes all noise and ensu­res that the speech reco­gni­tion plat­form works relia­bly in all noise conditions.

The novel solu­tion can be used in a wide range of use cases in various fields where speech reco­gni­tion and clearly intel­li­gi­ble conver­sa­ti­ons are requi­red, such as in the auto­mo­tive indus­try, cont­act centers, video confe­ren­cing, or robots serving custo­mers in the hospi­ta­lity indus­try. Curr­ently, Hi Auto is focu­sed on the auto­mo­tive sector and envi­si­ons the new tech­no­logy as a solu­tion to the problem of voice-based vehicle control.

Hi Auto is based in Tel Aviv and was foun­ded in Febru­ary 2019 by CEO Roy Baha­rav, CTO Eyal Shapira and Zohar Zisa­pel, who serves as the company’s acting chair­man and inves­tor. Baha­rav recently retur­ned to Israel after living on the West Coast of the United States for 12 years. There he held various product manage­ment posi­ti­ons at Google’s Moun­tain View head­quar­ters in Cali­for­nia, as well as CEO of SeamBI, a company he foun­ded in 2006. In the past, he held senior posi­ti­ons in an elite intel­li­gence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), such as comman­der of a divi­sion of 40 engi­neers and tech­ni­cal experts.

Eyal Shapira also comman­ded a detach­ment of some 40 engi­neers and specia­lists in an elite IDF tech­no­logy unit, in which he served and was awarded the Israel Defense Prize. After his mili­tary service, Shapira was a foun­der and admi­nis­tra­tor of start-up compa­nies and a consul­tant for compa­nies such as Intel and Broad­com. Zohar Zisa­pel, a major inves­tor in the auto­mo­tive sector, is one of Israel’s best-known high-tech entre­pre­neurs and mana­gers. Zisa­pel helped found and is chair­man of some of Israel’s best-known auto­mo­tive start-ups, inclu­ding Hailo, Argus and Innoviz.

Hi Auto will unveil a proto­type of the world’s first commer­cial driver voice reco­gni­tion solu­tion, which sepa­ra­tes the driver’s voice from all other voices in the vehicle, as well as noises inside and outside the vehicle, or hides all back­ground noise, at CES 2020 in Las Vegas from Jan. 7–10. Thus, for the first time, such a solu­tion is coming to the market that combi­nes a micro­phone placed in front of the inten­ded spea­ker with a camera that tracks his or her lips. The system is based on a deep-lear­ning soft­ware program instal­led on the device that elimi­na­tes noise, which cannot be achie­ved by using audio tech­ni­ques alone. The company has alre­ady estab­lished cont­acts with leading auto­mo­tive compa­nies, which are expec­ted to test its tech­no­logy in early 2020.

“Whether for use in purcha­sing train tickets, navi­ga­tion control or lane change commands, voice reco­gni­tion is rapidly beco­ming the most popu­lar device control method almost ever­y­where in the world,” said Roy Baha­rav, CEO and co-foun­der of Hi Auto. “Howe­ver, when the devices are opera­ted in envi­ron­ments with multi­ple spea­k­ers or in noisy envi­ron­ments, their relia­bi­lity decrea­ses drama­ti­cally. Our audio­vi­sual solu­tion is able to focus on the spea­ker and remove all back­ground noise, making it sound like they are in a recor­ding studio. Our solu­tion will make the expe­ri­ence around speech reco­gni­tion in the car, as well as in other envi­ron­ments, more satis­fy­ing for consu­mers and enable the intro­duc­tion of more complex and sensi­tive features by origi­nal equip­ment manufacturers.”

Munich — SKW Schwarz Rechts­an­wälte has advi­sed the foun­ders of parcel­Lab GmbH on a Series B finan­cing. The finan­cing round was struc­tu­red in the form of a bidding process in which inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors were also short­lis­ted. In addi­tion to some exis­ting inves­tors such as venture capi­tal inves­tor copa­rion, Capna­mic Ventures is now parti­ci­pa­ting in the company as a lead inves­tor.

parcel­Lab is the leading postal check­out expe­ri­ence plat­form in Europe. The company employs around 50 people in Munich, London and Paris and counts around 350 retail­ers and brands among its custo­mers, inclu­ding Ikea, Lidl, Media­Markt­Sa­turn and Fress­napf. The fresh capi­tal is to be used for further growth and the deve­lo­p­ment of addi­tio­nal markets.

Martin Bött­ger (photo) has been advi­sing parcel­Lab and its foun­ding team Tobias Buxho­idt, Anton Ender and Julian Krenge since 2016.

Advi­sors to Parcel­Lab GmbH: SKW Schwarz Rechtsanwälte
Dr. Martin Bött­ger (Part­ner, Corpo­rate; Lead), Stefan Schi­cker (Part­ner, IP/IT); Asso­cia­tes: Amelie Schroth der Zweite, Wilhelm von Feilitzsch (both Corporate)

Paris/Frankfurt am Main — Idin­vest Part­ners, the Euro­pean invest­ment firm specia­li­zing in the SME segment, has announ­ced the successful final closing of its third fund focu­sed on the digi­tal economy, Idin­vest Digi­tal Fund III, at €350 million. The fund thus exceeds its origi­nal target volume of 300 million euros. In addi­tion, Digi­tal Fund III signi­fi­cantly exceeds its predecessor’s volume of 154 million euros.

The fund, which is mana­ged by a nine-person invest­ment team, includes a number of new inves­tors from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. In addi­tion, a large number of inves­tors who had alre­ady inves­ted in Digi­tal Fund II also participated.

The new fund has alre­ady inves­ted €85 million in 15 inno­va­tive and fast-growing compa­nies in the Euro­pean digi­tal economy. These include German tele­me­di­cine startup Tele­Cli­nic, as well as Acinq, Kactus, Octo­ber, Malt Commu­nity, Orni­kar and Meero. They are all shaping tomorrow’s busi­ness models in a wide variety of digi­tal economy sectors: enter­prise soft­ware, fintech, insur­tech, deept­ech (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, big data, virtual reality, Inter­net of Things, cyber secu­rity) and digi­tal health.

Idin­vest Part­ners is one of the most active conti­nen­tal Euro­pean venture capi­tal (VC) inves­tors. The invest­ment focus is on the digi­tal economy, smart cities and health­care sectors. In Germany, the company has so far inves­ted in ten compa­nies, the current port­fo­lio includes:
Allt­hings, a PropTech company that provi­des digi­tal services that make the daily lives of buil­ding users easier, connect people and improve communication.
Campanda, a plat­form where custo­mers can rent motor­ho­mes world­wide from commer­cial opera­tors and private motor­home owners.
The e‑scooter rental company Circ.
Sunfire, a supplier of rene­wa­ble tech­ni­cal gas and fuel produc­tion equipment.
Tele­me­di­cine company Tele­Cli­nic, which offers around-the-clock video and phone consul­ta­ti­ons with specia­lists and primary care physicians.
Wefox, one of the leading insurtechs that helps consu­mers manage and opti­mize their insu­rance online.

The total volume of Idin­vest Part­ners’ venture capi­tal invest­ments in Germany amounts to 78 million euros. In terms of invest­ment volume and number of port­fo­lio compa­nies, Germany ranks third among the count­ries in which the company has inves­ted in the venture capi­tal sector.

Benoist Gross­mann, Mana­ging Part­ner at Idin­vest Part­ners, said: “The goal of our invest­ment acti­vity is to create an ecosys­tem that provi­des foun­ders with opti­mal deve­lo­p­ment condi­ti­ons. We are ther­e­fore extre­mely plea­sed with the fund­rai­sing success of our team. This success under­lines our exten­sive exper­tise in the digi­tal sector and the trust placed in us by leading insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and corpo­ra­tes in Europe and internationally.”

Matthieu Baret (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner at Idin­vest Part­ners, added: “The start-up scene in Europe is growing and deve­lo­ping steadily. This offers excel­lent invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, espe­ci­ally in the digi­tal sector. For many years now, Idin­vest Part­ners has been helping the most inno­va­tive and dyna­mic compa­nies in the Euro­pean tech­no­logy sector achieve their goals with a long-term, part­ner­ship-based approach that we will conti­nue to follow.”

About Idin­vest Partners
Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment firm focu­sed on the mid market. Curr­ently, Idin­vest Part­ners mana­ges assets of around €8 billion with more than 90 employees and has offices in Paris, Frank­furt, Madrid, Shang­hai and Seoul. The company has three busi­ness units: Venture & Growth Capi­tal, Private Debt and Private Funds Group. The company was foun­ded in 1997 as part of the Alli­anz Group and has been inde­pen­dent since 2010. In Janu­ary 2018, Idin­vest Part­ners became part of the Eura­zeo Group. The merger crea­ted a leading global invest­ment company with €17.7 billion in assets under manage­ment (inclu­ding nearly €11.6 billion from invest­ment part­ners) inves­ted in a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of nearly 400 corpo­rate holdings. www.idinvest.com

Karls­ruhe, Germany — HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons enables chemi­cal and mate­ri­als scien­tists with quan­tum chemi­cal and advan­ced mate­ri­als simu­la­ti­ons using mid-term NISQ proces­sors. UVC Part­ners, HTGF and btov lead the seed funding round.

From the deve­lo­p­ment of more powerful batte­ries to highly effi­ci­ent solar cells, the search for new mate­ri­als with speci­fi­cally prede­fi­ned proper­ties is crucial. Until now, our ability to deve­lop new mate­ri­als using simu­la­tion tools has been limi­ted by the lack of suffi­ci­ent compu­ting power. The deve­lo­p­ment of new mate­ri­als requi­res an under­stan­ding of mate­rial proper­ties at the atomic level, where the laws of physics are gover­ned by quan­tum mecha­nics. Even super­com­pu­ting centers can solve, at most, tiny quan­tum problems. Howe­ver, with the advent of quan­tum compu­ting, our ability to deve­lop enti­rely new mate­ri­als will change dramatically.

HQS provi­des the soft­ware to faci­li­tate the coming revo­lu­tion in compu­ter-aided mate­ri­als design. HQS is a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy and offers soft­ware for quan­tum compu­ters. It was foun­ded in 2017 by Dr. Iris Schwenk, Dr. Sebas­tian Zanker, Dr. Jan Reiner and Dr. Michael Martha­ler.

The four foun­ders had worked toge­ther at KIT for four years and then took the step of closing the gap between science and indus­try. Origi­nally backed by angel inves­tors Fried­rich Hoepf­ner and Manfred Zieg­ler, HQS has now closed a seed round of €2.3 million with expe­ri­en­ced deep tech inves­tors UVC Part­ners, HTGF and btov.

“At HQS, we drive inno­va­tion by brin­ging toge­ther a group of outstan­ding scien­tists from physics, chemis­try and quan­tum infor­ma­tion in a work envi­ron­ment that combi­nes crea­ti­vity with a clear focus on product deve­lo­p­ment,” says COO Iris Schwenk. HQS is looking to signi­fi­cantly expand its team in the coming quar­ters and invi­tes top talent with exper­tise to apply.

“HQS’ broad exper­tise in quan­tum deco­he­rence, noisy quan­tum gates, and solid-state physics makes them ideally suited to trans­fer quan­tum chemi­cal and advan­ced mate­ri­als simu­la­ti­ons to mid-term NISQ proces­sors. We look forward to when these simu­la­ti­ons even­tually lead to supe­rior results that realize a quan­tum advan­tage,” says Chris­tian Reit­ber­ger of the btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies team.

HQS has well-estab­lished colla­bo­ra­ti­ons with BASF, Bosch and Merck. These colla­bo­ra­ti­ons link the chemi­cal indus­try, which has been very successful in Germany for more than a century, with a highly inno­va­tive field of the future. Quan­tum compu­ting can massi­vely increase the speed of mate­ri­als deve­lo­p­ment, making it a criti­cal tech­no­logy for the chemi­cal industry.

“HQS’ proxi­mity to strong inno­va­tive compa­nies in the chemi­cal indus­try has been of great bene­fit. It has allo­wed us to deve­lop our products with a clear view of what our custo­mers actually need. We are very plea­sed that our deve­lo­p­ment is now supported by three inves­tors who have the pati­ence needed for a complex field like quan­tum compu­ting,” says CEO Michael Marthaler.

“The team at HQS combi­nes leading tech­ni­cal and busi­ness skills, making them well posi­tio­ned to make quan­tum compu­ting acces­si­ble to their indus­trial custo­mers,” said Benja­min Erhart, part­ner at UVC Partners.

Yann Fiebig, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF adds: “The deve­lo­p­ments in quan­tum compu­ting over the last few years open up unima­gi­ned oppor­tu­ni­ties in a wide range of indus­tries. With this strong inves­tor consor­tium, HQS has found the right part­ners to open up quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons entrepreneurially.”

About HQS Quan­tum Simulations
HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons predicts mate­rial proper­ties using quan­tum compu­ters. We acce­le­rate deve­lo­p­ment cycles in the chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. Quan­tum compu­ters can perform calcu­la­ti­ons impos­si­ble for even the most powerful super­com­pu­ters. Current quan­tum compu­ters suffer from intrin­sic faults that limit their perfor­mance. At HQS, we deve­lop algo­rithms for quan­tum compu­ters that can deal with these errors and enable our custo­mers to bene­fit from the perfor­mance advan­tage of quan­tum compu­ters earlier than their compe­ti­tors. In addi­tion, we offer custo­mi­zed simu­la­tion solu­ti­ons for conven­tio­nal compu­ters with an inte­gra­tion of high-end simu­la­tion methods and the possi­bi­lity to use the upco­ming quan­tum computers.

About btov Partners
btov Part­ners, foun­ded in 2000, is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm foun­ded and funded by serial entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness angels, focu­sing on indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and digi­tal leaders in the Euro­pean economy. The company mana­ges an invest­ment volume of 420 million euros and reviews over 3,000 invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties annu­ally. The btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies team supports indus­tri­ally rele­vant compa­nies ranging from hard­ware compa­nies with embedded soft­ware to appli­ca­tion and infra­struc­ture soft­ware provi­ders for various indus­try segments. The focus is on robo­tics & auto­no­mous vehic­les, indus­try 4.0 and indus­trial IoT, cyber-physi­cal secu­rity, elec­tro­nics & photo­nics, addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring, energy conver­sion and storage, and medi­cal and quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies. Past invest­ments include Black­lane, Data Artisans, DeepL, Dyem­an­sion, Effect Photo­nics, Elec­tro­chaea, ORCAM, Quanta, Raisin, SumUp, Volo­c­op­ter and XING. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.btov.vc/industrial-technologies.

About Unter­neh­mer­tum Venture Capi­tal Partners
Unter­neh­mer­tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners (UVC Part­ners) is an early-stage venture capi­tal firm that invests speci­fi­cally in tech­no­logy-based start­ups in the Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies, Enter­prise Soft­ware and Mobi­lity sectors. Per invest­ment round € 0.5 — 3 million are inves­ted and in successful invest­ments up to € 12 million in total.
Port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team and from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With its more than 180 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM has many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. Through the part­ner­ship, UVC Part­ners can offer start­ups unique access to talent, custo­mers and part­ners. The port­fo­lio includes invest­ments such as Flix­Bus, Carjump (Free2Move), KONUX, Blick­feld, 3YOURMIND and Vimcar.
www.uvcpartners.com

About Hoepf­ner Bräu
Foun­ded in 1798 as a home brewery, Hoepf­ner Bräu now works as a deve­lo­per of high-end real estate and as a busi­ness angel for hi-tech start­ups. Hoepf­ner foun­ded Cyber­Fo­rum, now Europe’s leading network for hi-tech start­ups, and was the first Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund part­ner at the Euro­pean Angel Fund (EAF). Hoepf­ner has been support­ing HQS since the end of 2018. https://hoepfner-braeu.de/hoepfner-strategie/beteiligungen/

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of EUR 895.5 million distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 550 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than EUR 2 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the busi­ness enter­pri­ses ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, Post­bank, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

Essen, Germany — Abalos Thera­peu­tics announ­ced the closing of a €12 million Series A finan­cing round and its corpo­rate debut. The company’s goal is to deve­lop new immuno-onco­logy thera­peu­tics. This approach is based on a speci­fic type of arena­vi­rus that prefe­ren­ti­ally infects and repli­ca­tes in cancer cells, gene­ra­ting a strong immune response against the cancer cells. The Series A round was jointly led by Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) and Grün­der­fonds Ruhr and included invest­ments from NRW.BANK and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF). The newly formed Super­vi­sory Board of the company will be joined by repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of all investors.

As part of the finan­cing, Abalos further announ­ced the appoint­ment of Dr. Marcus Kostka as Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer and Dr. Jörg Voll­mer as Chief Scien­ti­fic Offi­cer. Both have many years of expe­ri­ence in corpo­rate development.

“Abalos’ goal is to leverage the potent immune acti­va­tion and highly speci­fic tumor tropism of arena­vi­ru­ses to deve­lop a diffe­ren­tia­ted immune-onco­logy approach and vali­date it clini­cally,” said Marcus Kostka, M.D., CEO of Abalos Thera­peu­tics. “Having alre­ady supported and finan­ced a number of biotech compa­nies over the last few years, what attrac­ted me to Abalos in parti­cu­lar was the promi­sing tech­no­logy. The oppor­tu­nity to build a company toge­ther with Jörg Voll­mer, an expe­ri­en­ced immu­no­logy expert, also repres­ents an extre­mely attrac­tive opportunity.”

The funding round will enable Abalos to advance its arena­vi­rus-based drug candi­da­tes into clini­cal vali­da­tion. The first product candi­da­tes are being deve­lo­ped using the company’s proprie­tary Fast Evolu­tion plat­form, which gene­ra­tes viral strains with opti­mal anti-tumor proper­ties. These candi­da­tes are selec­ted based on their poten­tial to repro­gram the immune system and elimi­nate mali­gnant tumor tissue in a targe­ted and effi­ci­ent manner. The approach is based on the inno­va­tive rese­arch of immu­no­lo­gists Prof. Dr. Karl Lang, Head of the Depart­ment of Immu­no­logy at the Medi­cal Faculty of the Univer­sity of Duis­burg-Essen, and Prof. Dr. Phil­ipp Lang, Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Mole­cu­lar Medi­cine II at the Univer­sity of Düssel­dorf. Abalos opera­tes in close coope­ra­tion with the univer­si­ties of Duis­burg-Essen and Düsseldorf.

Dr. Aris­to­te­lis Nastos from Grün­der­fonds Ruhr commen­ted: “We see signi­fi­cant progress in the field of immuno-onco­logy, howe­ver, there is still a need for product candi­da­tes that should enable the full power of the entire immune system to be harnes­sed. It is parti­cu­larly important that these not only attack the primary tumor but also more distant meta­sta­ses. We are plea­sed to support Abalos’ expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team and its dedi­ca­ted scien­tists as they work towards an arena­vi­rus-based solution.”

Dr. Frank Hensel, Prin­ci­pal of High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, adds: “Abalos Thera­peu­tics is an excel­lent exam­ple of first-class scien­ti­fic achie­ve­ments at univer­si­ties in Germany. The combi­na­tion with an indus­try-expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team has resul­ted in a company that is capa­ble of taking a decisive step in cancer treatment.”

Dr. Marcus Kostka is a seaso­ned indus­try expert with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in various posi­ti­ons at Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim (BI) where he iden­ti­fied and drove inno­va­tion. Most recently, Dr. Kostka was a venture fund part­ner at BI and held super­vi­sory board posi­ti­ons at seve­ral compa­nies. He was also invol­ved in the successful exits of Rigon­tec and ICD Therapeutics.

Dr. Jörg Voll­mer brings to his posi­tion as CSO at Abalos Thera­peu­tics exten­sive know­ledge and expe­ri­ence in the fields of immu­no­logy, onco­logy and infec­tious dise­a­ses. He has acqui­red these in the course of his career in various R&D and manage­ment posi­ti­ons. Most recently, Dr. Voll­mer was CSO at Rigon­tec, where he was invol­ved in the deve­lo­p­ment of a novel immuno-onco­logy treat­ment approach and its clini­cal vali­da­tion. He also led the company’s R&D acti­vi­ties until its acqui­si­tion by MSD in 2017.

About Abalos
Abalos Thera­peu­tics is using the unique immune stimu­la­tion of arena­vi­ru­ses to deve­lop a new approach to fight­ing cancer. This should enable the full power of the entire immune system to be used speci­fi­cally against cancer cells. The goal of Abalos’ arena­vi­rus-based product candi­da­tes is to acti­vate the body’s innate and adap­tive immune response by propa­ga­ting the viru­ses in cancer cells. As a result, all rele­vant immune cell types speci­fi­cally attack the primary tumor and also distant meta­sta­ses. Led by expe­ri­en­ced biotech entre­pre­neurs and immu­no­logy pioneers, Abalos aims to make a quan­tum leap in immuno-oncology.

About Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Corpo­rate Venture Fund (BIVF)
Foun­ded in 2010, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH (BIVF) invests in biotech­no­logy compa­nies focu­sed on breakth­rough new thera­pies to drive inno­va­tion in biome­di­cal rese­arch. The BIVF seeks signi­fi­cant impro­ve­ments in pati­ent care through ground­brea­king scien­ti­fic disco­veries as well as their clini­cal trans­la­tion by buil­ding long-term rela­ti­onships with scien­tists and entre­pre­neurs. The focus of the BIVF is to explore novel thera­peu­tic approa­ches that address high unmet medi­cal needs in immuno-onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine, infec­tious dise­a­ses, and digi­tal health. These concepts may include, but are not limi­ted to, novel plat­form tech­no­lo­gies in response to previously untreata­ble dise­a­ses, next-gene­ra­tion vacci­nes, and/or New Biolo­gi­cal Enti­ties, such as onco­ly­tic viral therapy.

The BIVF takes an active role vis-à-vis the compa­nies in its port­fo­lio and adds signi­fi­cant value through its own exten­sive expe­ri­ence in drug disco­very, science and manage­ment. BIVF mana­ges EUR 250 million and curr­ently over­sees a port­fo­lio of over 25 companies.
boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com.

About the Grün­der­fonds Ruhr
The Grün­der­fonds was initia­ted jointly by Initia­tiv­kreis Ruhr and NRW.BANK and is the first private-sector early-stage fund in the Ruhr region finan­ced by regio­nal indus­trial and finan­cial compa­nies. The fund invests in inno­va­tive and tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from the life science & health, digi­tal economy, chemi­cals & new mate­ri­als, energy & indus­try, and logi­stics & trade sectors. Prere­qui­si­tes are good growth and exit pros­pects as well as compe­tent manage­ment. As a multi-corpo­rate early-stage fund, it also opens up important indus­try access points for the respec­tive port­fo­lio companies.
gruenderfondsruhr.com.

About NRW.BANK
NRW.BANK is the deve­lo­p­ment bank for North Rhine-West­pha­lia. It supports its owner, the state of NRW, in its struc­tu­ral and econo­mic policy tasks. In its three promo­tion fields “Economy”, “Housing” and “Infrastructure/Municipalities”, NRW.BANK uses a broad range of promo­tion instru­ments: from low-inte­rest deve­lo­p­ment loans to equity finan­cing and advi­sory services. It works toge­ther with all banks and savings banks in NRW on a compe­ti­tion-neutral basis. In its promo­tion acti­vi­ties, NRW.BANK also takes into account exis­ting offers from the fede­ral govern­ment, the state and the Euro­pean Union.
nrwbank.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of EUR 895.5 million distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 550 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than EUR 2 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the busi­ness enter­pri­ses ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, Post­bank, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

Munich — The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is provi­ding EUR 12 million to the fast-growing Fazua GmbH. The finan­cing is provi­ded under the EU Bank’s venture debt product, a type of venture capi­tal for inno­va­tive compa­nies. The loan is secu­red by a guaran­tee from the “Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments” (EFSI). UVC Part­ners is provi­ding the remai­ning 3 million euros. The VC fund of Unter­neh­mer­TUM was alre­ady invol­ved as lead inves­tor in the last finan­cing round of 6.5 million euros.

FSI is a central compo­nent of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, better known as the “Juncker Plan”, in which the EIB and the Euro­pean Commis­sion work closely toge­ther as stra­te­gic part­ners to make Europe’s economy more compe­ti­tive. Munich-based Fazua GmbH will use the money to expand the company and for rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment activities.

The e‑bike market is growing. And that’s what Fazua wants, too. With its detacha­ble drive system for e‑bikes, the Munich-based startup is alre­ady the market leader in some sectors such as bicy­cle racing. In order to open up new markets and to expand its own product range, Fazua is able to raise growth finan­cing of 15 million euros. In addi­tion to legacy inves­tor UVC Part­ners, the startup will also receive money from the Euro­pean Fund EFSI, which is mana­ged by the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB). This fund, which totals 21 billion euros, is inten­ded, among other things, to support compa­nies in the start-up phase, growth and expan­sion by provi­ding venture capital.

Consis­tent and profi­ta­ble growth
Fabian Reuter, CEO of Fazua, is deligh­ted with the success.

Foun­ded in 2013, the young company manu­fac­tures extre­mely light­weight eBike drive systems that are fitted with the motor and battery in the down tube of the bikes. With its drive systems aimed prima­rily at sporty riders who want to expe­ri­ence optio­nal assis­tance, espe­ci­ally at special moments, Fazua closes the gap between conven­tio­nal eBike drives and conven­tio­nal non-moto­ri­zed bikes. Since ente­ring the market, Fazua has built up a custo­mer base that now includes more than 35 Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­r­ers offe­ring bikes in the “eMoun­tain­bike”, “eUrban”, “eGra­vel” and “eRace­bike” segments, where Fazua holds a leading market position.

 

Landshut/Munich — Munich-based lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH raises its Series A finan­cing round as plan­ned and recei­ves a seven-digit amount from exis­ting inves­tors as well as from a new inves­tor. The young company intends to use the funds for further tech­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ment of the product and to build up the distri­bu­tion network in order to open up further markets. Bayern Kapi­tal, an inves­tor in lead­t­ri­bu­tor since June 2017, is also parti­ci­pa­ting again in this Series A3 round toge­ther with the Swiss Base­Tech Ventures AG and the former CEO of Sage Soft­ware GmbH, Peter Dewald. New on board is Hamm Manage­ment Consul­ting GmbH.

lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH has deve­lo­ped a soft­ware-as-a-service (SaaS) solu­tion of the same name for compa­nies from a wide range of indus­tries whose sales chan­nels are complex, multi-level and, to date, often orga­ni­zed manu­ally. The start­ing point: These compa­nies support their respec­tive sales part­ners in gene­ra­ting demand and leads and invest marke­ting funds for this purpose. The cont­acts gene­ra­ted from marke­ting acti­vi­ties were previously forwarded manu­ally to specia­list dealers, distri­bu­tors or sales part­ners. From this point on, compa­nies have very limi­ted or no over­view of whether and to what inten­sity these leads are being follo­wed up by the sales part­ner, what the current proces­sing status is, and how many leads have been conver­ted to actual orders. This need gave rise to the idea for lead­t­ri­bu­tor: In the course of the digi­tiza­tion wave, many compa­nies have to solve the ques­tion of how to digi­tize their multi-level sales chan­nels and colla­bo­ra­tion with sales part­ners, which is curr­ently diffi­cult to map with common CRM systems. To date, there is no compa­ra­ble solu­tion on the market.

leadtributor’s custo­mers include major inter­na­tio­nal IT compa­nies such as Adobe, Huawei, Sage and Haufe-Lexware. In addi­tion, lead­t­ri­bu­tor had expan­ded its offe­ring to other indus­tries — whose start­ing points are simi­lar to those of the IT indus­try and who use complex, indi­rect sales chan­nels or offer products that require expl­ana­tion. Even compa­nies from the sani­tary, heating, air-condi­tio­ning and buil­ding services engi­nee­ring sectors are now part of the eleven-sector lead­t­ri­bu­tor custo­mer portfolio.

Last year, lead­t­ri­bu­tor had alre­ady increased the Series A round from 2017 as plan­ned and used these funds for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the IT infra­struc­ture and the hiring of new employees. lead­t­ri­bu­tor also made great progress on the earnings side: the young company now gene­ra­tes six times as much license reve­nue as before Bayern Kapital’s investment.

Roman Huber, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “The team of lead­t­ri­bu­tor has achie­ved a lot in the past months and is fully on sche­dule. The perfor­mance of the IT has been signi­fi­cantly impro­ved and the data secu­rity has become a bit higher again. What is clear is that the market poten­tial for leadtributor’s solu­tion is there, as many compa­nies need soft­ware to make progress in digi­tiz­ing their own sales and busi­ness processes.”

About lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH
lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH was foun­ded in 2015 and is based in Munich. The company deve­lops and distri­bu­tes lead­t­ri­bu­tor, the SaaS solu­tion for lead manage­ment with sales part­ners. The soft­ware controls the rapid proces­sing and moni­to­ring of leads to sales part­ners. It is compa­ti­ble with popu­lar CRM systems and inter­faces with marke­ting auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons. In this way, it guaran­tees abso­lute trans­pa­rency of all chan­nel acti­vi­ties 24 hours a day and impro­ves coor­di­na­tion between marke­ting and sales depart­ments. www.leadtributor.de

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 305 million euros of venture capi­tal in over 270 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 7,500 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable companies.
www.bayernkapital.de

Berlin, Germany — Taca­lyx, a biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on the disco­very and deve­lo­p­ment of novel anti-TACA (“Tumor Asso­cia­ted Carbo­hy­drate Anti­gens”) cancer thera­pies, announ­ced that it has successfully closed a EUR 7 million finan­cing round. The capi­tal increase invol­ves a consor­tium of leading Euro­pean inves­tors from the life scien­ces and tech­no­logy sectors, jointly led by Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund and Kurma Part­ners, with Idin­vest Part­ners, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), copa­rion and Crea­thor Ventures also participating.

Taca­lyx, a spin-out of the Max Planck Insti­tute (MPI) for Colloid and Inter­face Rese­arch, will use the proceeds to build its disco­very plat­form, select appro­priate “lead” candi­da­tes and begin their precli­ni­cal development.

TACAs repre­sent novel targets for cancer thera­pies due to their speci­fic expres­sion on a variety of tumors. At the same time, TACAs are viru­lence factors for tumor growth and spread, and ther­e­fore their masking and/or down­re­gu­la­tion impairs vital func­tions of the tumor cell. Due to the low immu­no­ge­ni­city of TACAs, the gene­ra­tion of speci­fic anti­bo­dies is a major chall­enge and requi­res inno­va­tive approa­ches as well as exten­sive know­ledge of the tech­no­logy used.

Tacalyx’s disco­very plat­form enables the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and vali­da­tion of speci­fic TACAs as tumor targets, as well as the gene­ra­tion of “lead” mole­cu­les direc­ted against these complex targets, with the goal of deve­lo­ping novel immu­no­the­ra­pies for more effec­tive cancer control. The company uniquely combi­nes its ability to synthe­size suffi­ci­ent quan­ti­ties of ultra-pure and highly complex TACA struc­tures for use in appro­priate analy­ti­cal and scree­ning plat­forms with its expe­ri­ence in gene­ra­ting anti­bo­dies against non-peptide targets.

Taca­lyx secu­res through the Max Planck Inno­va­tion GmbH has access to licen­ses and know-how of the under­ly­ing tech­no­lo­gies as well as to the inven­ti­ons of its scien­ti­fic co-foun­ders Prof. Dr. Peter H. Seeber­ger (Direc­tor at the MPI of Collo­ids and Inter­faces and world leading expert in glyco­sci­ence) and Dr. Oren Mosco­vitz (Group Leader at the MPI of Collo­ids and Inter­faces and expert in glyco­bio­logy and glycoon­co­logy). Seeber­ger and Moscovitz’s disco­veries in glyco-science and its role in cancer, with finan­cial support from Max Planck Society Tech­no­logy Trans­fer funds, led to the deve­lo­p­ment of the proprie­tary Taca­lyx plat­form, which includes the gene­ra­tion of glycan-binding antibodies.

Dr. Peter Sonder­mann, CEO of Taca­lyx, said, “This funding from highly expe­ri­en­ced life science and tech­no­logy inves­tors repres­ents an important vali­da­tion of our plat­form and deve­lo­p­ment stra­tegy and will help posi­tion us at the fore­front of this ground­brea­king approach. In addi­tion to estab­li­shing the company and our lead gene­ra­tion disco­very plat­form, we will use these funds to study rele­vant TACA biology in detail and further evaluate and charac­te­rize our first lead anti­bo­dies and their func­tional role in cancer therapy. In addi­tion, in vivo phar­ma­co­logy studies to evaluate the safety and effi­cacy of our “lead” anti­bo­dies will provide further func­tional vali­da­tion to advance at least one of these anti­bo­dies into clini­cal development.”

Dr. Detlev Menne­rich, Invest­ment Direc­tor at Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH, said:

“We are plea­sed to have built this syndi­cate of leading inves­tors, follo­wing our stra­tegy of inves­t­ing in breakth­rough, thera­peu­tics-focu­sed biotech­no­logy compa­nies that are gene­ra­ting inno­va­tion in biome­di­cal rese­arch. The gene­ra­tion of anti-TACA anti­bo­dies requi­res expert know­ledge to produce speci­fic high-affi­nity binders for TACAs. Tacalyx’s TACA synthe­sis chemis­try, under­stan­ding of TACA biology, and ability to gene­rate and charac­te­rize anti-TACA anti­bo­dies against these weakly immu­no­ge­nic targets will enable the company to leverage their signi­fi­cant poten­tial in the treat­ment of quite a few cancers.”

As part of the finan­cing, Dr. Lena Krzy­zak (High-Tech Grün­der­fonds), Ulrich Mahr (Max Planck Inno­va­tion), Dr. Detlev Menne­rich (Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund), Dr. Peter Neubeck (Kurma Partners/Idinvest Part­ners), Dr. Sebas­tian Pünze­ler (copa­rion) and Karl­heinz Schme­lig (Crea­thor) will join Prof. Dr. Peter H. Seeber­ger (MPI for Collo­ids and Inter­faces) on Taca­lyx’ Super­vi­sory Board.

About the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund
The Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) was estab­lished in 2010 and invests in breakth­rough biotech­no­logy compa­nies focu­sed on thera­peu­tics to drive inno­va­tion in biome­di­cal rese­arch. The BIVF seeks signi­fi­cant impro­ve­ments in pati­ent care through ground­brea­king science and clini­cal trans­la­tion by buil­ding long-term rela­ti­onships with scien­tists and entre­pre­neurs. The focus of the BIVF is on unpre­ce­den­ted thera­peu­tic concepts that address high medi­cal needs in immuno-onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine or infec­tious dise­a­ses. These may include novel plat­form tech­no­lo­gies to address previously unusable targets, new gene­ra­tion vacci­nes, and/or novel biolo­gics such as onco­ly­tic viral therapy, and digi­tal health. The BIVF takes an active role with its port­fo­lio compa­nies — deli­ve­ring signi­fi­cant value through its own exten­sive drug disco­very, scien­ti­fic and manage­ment exper­tise. The BIVF mana­ges 250 million euros and curr­ently over­sees a port­fo­lio of 25 compa­nies. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com.

About Kurma Partners
Foun­ded in July 2009, Kurma Part­ners is a major Euro­pean player with offices in Paris and Munich in finan­cing health­care and biotech­no­logy inno­va­tion, from crea­tion to growth capi­tal, nota­bly through Kurma Biofund I to III and Kurma Diagno­stics via stra­te­gic part­ner­ships with renow­ned Euro­pean rese­arch and medi­cal insti­tu­ti­ons. The new Kurma Biofund III fund invests in appro­xi­m­ately twelve to fifteen private compa­nies focu­sed on thera­peu­tic areas with high unmet medi­cal needs, of which appro­xi­m­ately 40% are early-stage finan­cings and start-ups such as Tacalyx.
www.kurmapartners.com

About copa­rion
copa­rion is a venture capi­tal inves­tor for young, German tech­no­logy compa­nies. With a fund volume of 275 million euros, copa­rion makes a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to the rapid and sustainable growth of young tech­no­logy compa­nies. Copa­rion support entre­pre­neu­rial vision with know-how without inter­fe­ring in the opera­tio­nal busi­ness. Thanks to its many years of expe­ri­ence in venture capi­tal and in buil­ding up compa­nies, the fund manage­ment reco­gni­zes poten­tial and opens up new perspec­ti­ves. copa­rion finan­ces exclu­si­vely toge­ther with co-inves­tors. copa­rion invests up to 10 million euros per company, usually in seve­ral finan­cing rounds of 1–5 million euros each. The focus of the fund is on German compa­nies in the start-up and young growth phase.
www.coparion.vc

About Crea­thor Ventures
Crea­thor Ventures invests in tech­no­logy-driven compa­nies that are advan­cing perso­na­liza­tion and digi­tiza­tion in health­care, as well as indus­try and enter­prise auto­ma­tion. The regio­nal focus is on Germany and Switz­er­land. From its offices in Bad Homburg and Zurich, the 15-strong team curr­ently supports over 30 tech­no­logy and health­care compa­nies. The manage­ment team has finan­ced over 200 compa­nies as lead or co-lead inves­tors over the past 30 years. More than 20 compa­nies were listed on inter­na­tio­nal stock exch­an­ges. Crea­thor Ventures curr­ently mana­ges a fund volume of over 230 million euros.
www.creathor.com

About Idin­vest Partners
Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean mid-market private equity firm. With EUR 8 billion in assets under manage­ment, the firm has tapped into various segments, inclu­ding inno­va­tive start-up venture capi­tal tran­sac­tions, mid-sized private debt, i.e. single-tran­che, senior and subor­di­na­ted debt, advice on primary and secon­dary invest­ments, and private equity. Idin­vest Part­ners was foun­ded in 1997 and was part of the Alli­anz Group until 2010. In Janu­ary 2018, Idin­vest Part­ners, previously an inde­pen­dent company, became a subsi­diary of Eura­zeo, a leading global invest­ment firm, with a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of EUR 17 billion in assets under manage­ment, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately EUR 11 billion from invest­ment part­ners inves­ted in over 350 compa­nies. www.idinvest.com

About Max Planck Innovation
As the tech­no­logy trans­fer orga­niza­tion of the Max Planck Society, Max Planck Inno­va­tion is the link between indus­try and basic rese­arch. With our inter­di­sci­pli­nary team, we advise and support the scien­tists of the Max Planck Insti­tu­tes in the evalua­tion of inven­ti­ons, the filing of patents, and the estab­lish­ment of compa­nies. We offer indus­try central access to the inno­va­tions of the Max Planck Insti­tu­tes. In this way, we fulfill an important task: the trans­fer of basic rese­arch results into econo­mic­ally and soci­ally useful products.
www.max-planck-innovation.de

About Taca­lyx
Taca­lyx is a priva­tely held onco­logy company focu­sed on the disco­very and deve­lo­p­ment of anti-TACA (Tumor Asso­cia­ted Carbo­hy­drate Anti­gen) anti­bo­dies for the treat­ment of cancer. TACAs are formed during mali­gnant trans­for­ma­tion in a micro­evo­lu­tio­nary process. Expres­sion of TACAs is eleva­ted in many tumor types, making TACAs attrac­tive poten­tial targets for cancer treat­ment, against which appro­priate thera­peu­tics are being deve­lo­ped using the proprie­tary tech­no­logy platform.

Taca­lyx was foun­ded by an expe­ri­en­ced team that has successfully deve­lo­ped drugs in seve­ral compa­nies, inclu­ding Glycart, Roche, Suppre­Mol, Baxalta, Vaxxilon, GlyXera and Glyco­Uni­verse. The foun­ders of the company include BIVF (repre­sen­ted by Dr. Detlev Menne­rich, Invest­ment Mana­ger), Dr. Peter Sonder­mann, CEO of Taca­lyx, Prof. Dr. Peter H. Seeber­ger, Direc­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute of Collo­ids and Inter­faces, Dr. Oren Mosco­vitz, Group Leader at the MPI of Collo­ids and Inter­faces, and the Max Planck Society (repre­sen­ted by Ulrich Mahr, Member of the Execu­tive Board of Max Planck Innovation).

Taca­lyx is head­quar­te­red in Berlin and is backed by leading Euro­pean life science and tech­no­logy inves­tors such as Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF), Kurma Part­ners, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), copa­rion, Crea­thor Ventures and Idpart­ners. www.tacalyx.com

About High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF)
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of EUR 895.5 million distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 550 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than EUR 2 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

 

Capi­tal for further growth at Munich-based fintech: wealth­pi­lot closes finan­cing round

Munich — Munich fintech wealth­pi­lot recei­ves capi­tal for further growth The busi­ness model of the fast-growing Munich-based finan­cial tech­no­logy company wealth­pi­lot is aimed at hybrid wealth manage­ment. Seve­ral inves­tors contri­bu­ted a total of 2.6 million euros in a finan­cing round. Of this amount, EUR 1.1 million comes from a new inves­tor and EUR 1.5 million from exis­ting inves­tors such as Bayern Kapi­tal. With the funds from the new round, wealth­pi­lot intends to expand sales and marke­ting as well as drive inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and product development.

wealthpilot’s digi­tal infra­struc­ture enables wealth advi­sors, asset mana­gers, family offices, banks or broker pools to conti­nue serving their clients perso­nally in the future. This hybrid approach combi­nes the advan­ta­ges of perso­nal consul­ting with wealthpilot’s effi­ci­ent soft­ware-as-a-service (SaaS) plat­form. The model is incre­asingly in demand: advi­sors are now analy­zing more than EUR 12 billion in assets with the wealth­pi­lot soft­ware, up from around EUR 4 billion in August 2018.

The finan­cial tech­no­logy company wealth­pi­lot was foun­ded in 2017 and now has over 30 employees at its expan­ded Munich loca­tion and in the Graz office, which will open in July 2019. In total, more than 4,500 banks, insu­rance compa­nies, broker pools, asset advi­sors and mana­gers, tax consul­tants, family offices and their private clients curr­ently work with wealthpilot’s solu­tion, compared with around 1,500 twelve months ago. With wealthpilot’s SaaS plat­form, finan­cial services firms and advi­sors can service all assets and asset clas­ses of new and exis­ting custo­mers, deli­ver a world-class custo­mer expe­ri­ence, and achieve signi­fi­cant time savings through process auto­ma­tion. “Since the begin­ning of 2019 alone, we have acqui­red ten major banks and insu­rance compa­nies as custo­mers. Our market entry into the enter­prise segment has thus been very successful. There are now over twelve billion euros in assets that advi­sors and private custo­mers analyze with our soft­ware,” says Stephan Schug (photo), one of the foun­ders and mana­ging direc­tors of wealthpilot.

“wealth­pi­lot has deve­lo­ped very well since our invest­ment last year. The company’s growth rates are impres­sive,” says Bayern Kapi­tal Mana­ging Direc­tor Dr. Georg Ried. “High-quality custo­mer care based on a sophisti­ca­ted yet user-friendly SaaS plat­form is in demand among wealth advi­sors and mana­gers. Using wealth­pi­lot saves them time that can be spent on perso­nal consul­ting. We were happy to parti­ci­pate in the follow-up finan­cing round to lay the foun­da­tion for the company’s further growth,” conti­nues Dr. Ried.

Now, the addi­tio­nal capi­tal from the finan­cing round concluded in June is to be used prima­rily to further deve­lop auto­ma­ted data aggre­ga­tion and analy­sis of asset values as well as intel­li­gent scena­rio analy­ses for wealth advi­sors and private custo­mers. In addi­tion, the funds will be used to expand mobile iOS and Android appli­ca­ti­ons. “We have become a leading provi­der of cloud-based soft­ware for hybrid wealth manage­ment. The fact that we have been able to win a large number of new custo­mers in the enter­prise and SME sectors in recent months is proof of the strong demand for inno­va­tive finan­cial tech­no­logy that impro­ves and simpli­fies advi­sory services in wealth manage­ment. In addi­tion, the strong commit­ment of a new inves­tor and the rene­wed parti­ci­pa­tion of exis­ting inves­tors shows that we can both gain and retain trust over the long term. We are excel­lently posi­tio­ned for the next growth steps of our company,” explains Schug.

With its approach, wealth­pi­lot also wants to “demo­cra­tize” wealth manage­ment to a certain extent, as Schug explains: “Custo­mers should be able to use tools for wealth advice and finan­cial plan­ning regard­less of their asset situa­tion, which are other­wise only available to the very wealthy with assets in excess of milli­ons,” he says.

About wealth­pi­lot
wealth­pi­lot GmbH, based in Munich and Graz, is a fast-growing tech­no­logy company provi­ding a digi­tal infra­struc­ture for the perso­nal wealth manage­ment of the future. Soft­ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) is one of the leading solu­ti­ons in wealth manage­ment and enables wealth mana­gers and advi­sors to achieve a symbio­sis of digi­tal and perso­nal wealth advice. wealth­pi­lot is alre­ady in use by over 4,500 users, who analyze and plan assets of over 12 billion euros with wealth­pi­lot every day. www.wealthpilot.de

Augmen­ted Reality in the Phar­maceu­ti­cal Industry:

Lands­hut / Munich-Grün­wald — Bayern Kapi­tal invests in Goodly Inno­va­tions as part of a Series A finan­cing round. Toge­ther with BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft and two busi­ness angels, Bayern Kapi­tal invests a seven-digit amount. Foun­ded at the end of 2016, the start-up from Munich-Grün­wald has deve­lo­ped an augmen­ted reality (AR) system that signi­fi­cantly impro­ves effi­ci­ency in produc­tion in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech indus­tries, as well as enab­ling considera­ble cost savings. Goodly Inno­va­tions plans to use the Series A round funding to further deve­lop its product and expand commercialization.

Goodly Inno­va­tions’ augmen­ted reality system, called Opti­worX, is used in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech indus­tries for produc­tion proces­ses that are down­stream of active ingre­di­ent manu­fac­tu­ring. Here, compa­nies face the chall­enge that opera­ting equip­ment — for exam­ple, in the pack­a­ging of active ingre­di­ents — often has to be taken out of service due to main­ten­ance or retro­fit­ting. As a result, produc­tion is stop­ped. Depen­ding on the comple­xity of a machine, these down­ti­mes amount to up to 50 percent and cause considera­ble costs. The Goodly solu­tion is based on mature tech­no­lo­gies and is alre­ady successfully used by seve­ral inter­na­tio­nal phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies. Here, it ensu­res grea­ter effi­ci­ency and faster problem solving by visually guiding machine users through the chan­geo­ver or main­ten­ance process using augmen­ted reality glas­ses. Any number of people can colla­bo­rate on any number of end devices. To date, Opti­worX is the only system to offer this multi-user, multi-device colla­bo­ra­tion for large indus­trial manu­fac­tu­ring and pack­a­ging faci­li­ties. The plat­form is desi­gned as a modu­lar, vendor-inde­pen­dent system. It enables fast, custo­mi­zed setup and inte­gra­tion into virtually any produc­tion environment.

Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “Goodly Inno­va­tions has deve­lo­ped a product that uses augmen­ted reality to solve a funda­men­tal problem in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech indus­tries. The tech­no­logy works relia­bly — an important point in a regu­la­ted envi­ron­ment. Combi­ned with the expe­ri­ence of the foun­ding team, these are good prere­qui­si­tes for estab­li­shing the system as a stan­dard in a large market.”

Robert Hoff­meis­ter, Co-Foun­der and CEO of Goodly Inno­va­tions, states: “Thanks to the finan­cing round, we can acce­le­rate the further expan­sion of Opti­worX for the biopharma sector, both with addi­tio­nal product features and with grea­ter inter­na­tio­nal presence. We last saw produc­ti­vity leaps and quality impro­ve­ments on this scale in the auto­mo­tive indus­try 30 years ago. With Opti­worX, we are helping employees to unlock up to 50 percent produc­ti­vity reser­ves through the use of state-of-the-art and intui­tive technology.”

Alex­an­der Ullmann, Invest­ment Mana­ger at BayBG, says: “With Opti­worX, Goodly opti­mi­zes produc­tion proces­ses and mini­mi­zes plan­ned and unplan­ned plant down­time and chan­geo­ver times. We were parti­cu­larly convin­ced by the outstan­ding unique selling point of the Goodly solu­tion. It is the only AR system that enables multi-member teams to work on a task simul­ta­neously and synchro­no­usly in real time.”

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 300 million euros of venture capi­tal in 270 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 7,500 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

About Goodly Inno­va­tions GmbH
Goodly Inno­va­tions GmbH is a leading provi­der of augmen­ted reality solu­ti­ons for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. The Opti­worX product is the only multi-user team manage­ment solu­tion that uses AR. Opti­worX was desi­gned as a modu­lar, vendor-inde­pen­dent system and allows a fast and indi­vi­dual setup in almost any produc­tion envi­ron­ment, as a stand-alone system or inte­gra­ted, e.g. into exis­ting MES systems for the crea­tion of Elec­tro­nic Batch Records.
www.goodly-innovations.com

About BayBG
With an inves­ted volume of more than 300 million euros, BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH is one of the largest venture capi­tal and equity capi­tal provi­ders for start-ups and medium-sized compa­nies. With its venture capi­tal and equity invest­ments, BayBG faci­li­ta­tes the imple­men­ta­tion of inno­va­tion and growth projects, the regu­la­tion of corpo­rate succes­sion, restruc­tu­rings, or the opti­miza­tion of the capi­tal structure.
www.baybg.de

Munich — Munich-based start-up klarx secu­res EUR 12.5 million in a Series B finan­cing round. The lead inves­tor is B&C Inno­va­tion Invest­ments (BCII), and the former inves­tor Target Global is also parti­ci­pa­ting again. LUTZ | ABEL is advi­sing klarx in this finan­cing round.

Foun­ded in Munich in 2015 by brot­hers Florian and Matthias Hand­schuh and Vincent Koch, klarx is now one of the leading rental portals for cons­truc­tion machi­nery with over 50,000 rental requests proces­sed by now. The start-up aims to tap into the €25 billion market volume of the digi­tal rental market for cons­truc­tion equip­ment in Europe. The online rental plat­form now has 4,000 regis­tered part­ners and more than a quar­ter of a million pieces of light equip­ment with their tech­ni­cal data. In order to be able to provide cons­truc­tion custo­mers with a complete package of service and billing, klarx rents the equip­ment itself and subse­quently sublets complete cons­truc­tion site faci­li­ties, inclu­ding trans­port and insu­rance cover, to its customers.

With the help of Series B finan­cing, klarx is incre­asingly focu­sing on the inter­na­tio­nal market and the further deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form into a digi­tal sche­du­ling tool for land­lords and cons­truc­tion compa­nies from all over Europe. The start-up aims to digi­tize the cons­truc­tion indus­try with its tech­no­logy plat­form. In addi­tion to lead inves­tor B&C Inno­va­tion Invest­ments (BCII), legacy inves­tor Target Global again parti­ci­pa­ted in the financing.

Consul­tant klarx: LUTZ | ABEL
Dr. Marco Eick­mann (Lead Part­ner), Phil­ipp Hoene and Dr. Sebas­tian Sumalvico

About B&C Inno­va­tion Invest­ments GmbH
B&C Inno­va­tion Invest­ments GmbH (BCII) invests in inno­va­tive growth compa­nies with a tech­no­lo­gi­cal back­ground that are rele­vant to the indus­try and thus to the “old economy”. The focus is on high-impact start-up teams, which BCII supports as an inves­tor and active shareholder.

BCII’s invest­ments are aimed at foun­ding teams pursuing busi­ness models with a tech­no­lo­gi­cal or inno­va­tive core and promi­sing growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. The aim of BCII is not “merely” to support foun­ding teams with capi­tal, but to network them with estab­lished compa­nies and estab­lish them in the market.

BCII does not pursue a manda­tory exit stra­tegy in its invest­ments. Longer-term part­ner­ships with growth compa­nies are also conceiva­ble for BCII under the condi­tion of value-enhan­cing development.

In addi­tion to its majo­rity share­hol­dings in AMAG, Lenzing, Sempe­rit and its long-stan­ding acti­vi­ties in the area of rese­arch promo­tion, the B&C Group is thus provi­ding further impe­tus for Austria as a busi­ness location.

Munich — King & Wood Malle­sons (KWM) advi­sed Marondo Capi­tal GmbH (Marondo) on its invest­ment in Data­vard AG (Data­vard) in the context of a capi­tal increase. Marondo’s invest­ment will enable data manage­ment expert Data­vard to conti­nue its stra­te­gic growth and successful corpo­rate development.

Head­quar­te­red in Heidel­berg, Germany, with addi­tio­nal loca­ti­ons world­wide (in Europe, the US, and Asia), Data­vard is an inno­va­tive provi­der of intel­li­gent solu­ti­ons and consul­ting for SAP data manage­ment, appli­ca­tion decom­mis­sio­ning, inte­gra­tion of SAP data into Big Data and Data Lakes, mana­ged services, and system land­scape trans­for­ma­tion, inclu­ding SAP S/4 HANA migra­tion. The IT company counts inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies such as Alli­anz, BASF and Nestlé among its customers.

Marondo is an inno­va­tive invest­ment company for fast-growing, tech­no­logy-focu­sed compa­nies of the next gene­ra­tion of SMEs in Germany and DACH. The fund invests in compa­nies in the clas­sic German engi­nee­ring disci­pli­nes through majo­rity & mino­rity tran­sac­tions. This includes the indus­try sectors soft­ware & IT, indus­try 4.0, envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­lo­gies, new mate­ri­als as well as medi­cal tech­no­logy and health tech­no­lo­gies. Photo: Marko Maschek, foun­ding part­ner Marondo Capital.

Advi­sor Marondo Capi­tal GmbH:
Dr. Michael Roos (Part­ner), Hilke Schmitt (Coun­sel), Dr. Laura Schu­mann (Asso­ciate)

Munich — Munich-based AI start-up E‑Bot7 raises EUR 5.5 million in a Series A finan­cing round. — Lead inves­tor is the inter­na­tio­nally active venture capi­ta­list RTP Global. LUTZ | ABEL is advi­sing RTP Global on the finan­cing round.

Start-up E‑Bot7 deve­lops and inte­gra­tes arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and deep lear­ning into exis­ting custo­mer service CRM systems. The start-up aims to enable auto­ma­ted proces­ses in custo­mer service by analy­zing inco­ming custo­mer inqui­ries and forwar­ding them to the appro­priate depart­ment. With the fresh capi­tal, E‑Bot7 intends to further increase its tech­no­logy and busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment team so that the AI solu­tion can be further expan­ded. It will also help new custo­mers inte­grate arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence into their custo­mer service.

In addi­tion to RTP Global, exis­ting inves­tors 42CAP, main Incu­ba­tor and a private inves­tor also parti­ci­pa­ted in this finan­cing round. In the current finan­cing round, Dr. Marco Eick­mann, Part­ner (photo), Phil­ipp Hoene and Dr. Sebas­tian Sumal­vico provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to the inves­tor RTP Global. Advi­sor RTP Global Dr. Marco Eick­mann, LL.M. (part­ner) Phil­ipp Hoene Dr. Sebas­tian Sumal­vico, Euro­pean Lawyer (Univ. Würzburg)

About LUTZ | ABEL
With more than 60 lawy­ers and offices in Munich, Hamburg and Stutt­gart, the commer­cial law firm LUTZ | ABEL provi­des advice on all aspects of commer­cial law. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.lutzabel.com