News-Kategorie: Venture Capital

Munich — DLA Piper has FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co. KG on an invest­ment of up to USD two million as part of a Series A finan­cing round in Moon­light­ing, Inc, opera­tor of the on-demand free­lance plat­form Moon­light­ing. The goal of the invest­ment is to inte­grate the open source block­chain soft­ware EOSIO into Moonlighting’s Block­chain Profile Manage­ment System (BPMS).

Moon­light­ing is the first on-demand mobile solu­tion that uses a block­chain-powered plat­form and proprie­tary tokens to create a virtual market­place for self-employed and small busi­ness refer­rals. Foun­ded in 2014 in Char­lot­tes­ville, Virgi­nia, the company will use the invest­ment to trans­fer more than 700,000 user profiles to its block­chain using EOSIO. Each profile beco­mes trans­fera­ble and conta­ins important data such as ratings, recom­men­da­ti­ons, and confir­ma­ti­ons of third-party licen­ses and certi­fi­ca­tes. Moon­light­ing will also trans­fer its mobile manage­ment tools, such as CRM or mobile payment, to the block­chain to enable users to work secu­rely online.

FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co KG is a fund mana­ged by FinLab AG that invests exclu­si­vely in projects based on the open source block­chain soft­ware EOSIO. The fund focu­ses on seed and early-stage start­ups seeking equity invest­ment. The joint fund of USD 100 million was laun­ched by Block.one, the company behind EOSIO, and FinLab AG.

Advi­sor FinLab EOS VC Europe I: DLA Piper 
The DLA Piper team led by part­ner Simon Vogel also included senior asso­ciate Michael Rebholz (both Private Equity/Venture Capi­tal, Munich). In addi­tion, part­ners Danish Hamid (Washing­ton D.C.) and Mark F. Radcliffe and asso­cia­tes Kyle de Neve and Syeda Nazifa Nawroj (all Corporate/M&A, Sili­con Valley) were invol­ved in the advisory.

Düssel­dorf — Douglas is ente­ring into a coope­ra­tion with Welmoa, a start-up for beauty services on demand. In the course of this, the perfu­mery giant is not only a clas­sic venture capi­ta­list, but also a media-for-equity investor.

Welmoa offers beauty services on demand and is alre­ady repre­sen­ted with its services in six cities in Germany. Speci­fi­cally, custo­mers can use the app to book appli­ca­ti­ons such as makeup, massa­ges, nail care or hair styling. The treat­ments take placeSo calcu­late your indi­vi­dual SEO budget now then at the desi­red loca­tion. The various beauty treat­ments can be booked seven days a week.

Addi­tio­nal entry offers
Exis­ting Douglas custo­mers are to bene­fit from further intro­duc­tory offers in the future. “The coope­ra­tion with Welmoa is to provide this service to our custo­mers. We are so convin­ced by the concept of being pampe­red with high-quality beauty services in the place of your choice that we are beco­ming active as an inves­tor,” says Tina Müller (photo), Group CEO of Douglas. “Inno­va­tive compa­nies are turning to web apps and head­less CMS.”

The equip­ment needed for the treat­ment is brought by the respec­tive service provi­ders. In order to be booka­ble through Welmoa’s app, they must go through a three-stage selec­tion process to ensure they meet the requi­red standards.

Berlin/ Munich — The indus­trial insurer HDI Global SE is inves­t­ing 12 million euros in the company buil­der Next Big Thing AG(NBT) via Hanno­ver Digi­tal Invest. The Series A round also invol­ves the inves­tor EOS VC , which is mana­ged by FinLab. NBT posi­ti­ons itself as a company buil­der, inno­va­tion hub and think tank. DLA Piper advi­sed FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co. KG as co-inves­tor on the invest­ment of up to two million euros.

Foun­ded in 2016, Next Big Thing AG is the leading company buil­der in the field of IoT and Block­chain and offers compre­hen­sive services for the deve­lo­p­ment of joint ventures. With its exper­tise, the company, which employs 61 people from 21 count­ries, offers a plat­form for foun­ders, entre­pre­neurs, inves­tors as well as poli­ti­ci­ans in Germany and Europe. Next Big Thing AG is part of de:hub, the digi­tal hub initia­tive of the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, which aims to inte­grate medium-sized and large compa­nies with new inno­va­tion part­ners from science and the start-up scene into a Germany-wide digi­tal network.

FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co KG is a fund mana­ged by FinLab AG that invests exclu­si­vely in projects based on the open source block­chain soft­ware EOS.IO. The fund focu­ses on seed and early-stage start­ups seeking equity invest­ment. The joint fund of USD 100 million was laun­ched by Block.one, the company behind EOS.IO, and FinLab AG.

The DLA Piper team led by part­ner Simon Vogel also included senior asso­ciate Michael Rebholz (both Private Equity/Venture Capi­tal, Munich).

Frank­furt am Main — Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed Euro­pean private equity firm Vitru­vian Part­ners on its invest­ment in AI-powered health­care plat­form ADA Health.

Vitru­vian is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment fund head­quar­te­red in London that invests in Euro­pean compa­nies with high growth poten­tial, prima­rily through a focus on tech­no­logy and digi­ta­liza­tion-based busi­ness models. ADA Health, Europe’s “Hottest Health Start-up 2018,” offers the world’s leading health app, “Ada,” which iden­ti­fies appro­priate next steps for poten­tial proper medi­cal treat­ment for users, as well as B2B users such as health insu­r­ers and health­care provi­ders. The ADA app is AI-powered; it has been available for down­load world­wide since 2016 and has so far ranked first in the medi­cal app space in over 130 countries.

Vitru­vian has inves­ted in ADA Health through a Series B Growth Finan­cing to provide addi­tio­nal growth capi­tal to the company, along with its foun­ding share­hol­ders and exis­ting inves­tors, inclu­ding through a capi­tal raise. This is inten­ded not only to further expand ADA Health’s exis­ting market posi­tion in Germany, but also to enable further roll-out internationally.

The tran­sac­tion has alre­ady been comple­ted. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the size of the growth investment.

Vitru­vian Part­ners was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird attor­neys: Part­ner Dr. Hans Peter Leube, LL.M., Lead, and Asso­cia­tes Mari­anne Nawroth, Dr. Ann-Kris­tin Asmuß (all Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Inga Kerner (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Fabian Niemann and Asso­ciate Dr. Nils Lölfing (both IT and Data Protec­tion, Düssel­dorf), Coun­sel Lea Mackert, LL.M. and Asso­ciate Dr. Juliane Kliesch (both IT and Commer­cial, Düssel­dorf), Part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Csaki and Coun­sel Chris­tian Linden­thal, LL.M. (both Health­care Regu­la­tion, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Barbara Geck (Labor Law, Frank­furt) and Asso­ciate Florian Keßenich (Labor Law, Hamburg).

End

Back­ground
This advice demons­tra­tes once again that Bird & Bird’s parti­cu­lar expe­ri­ence in the tech­no­logy sector is meeting with strong and growing demand in the legal market, and incre­asingly so in private equity advice. This is because the firm is excep­tio­nally well posi­tio­ned, parti­cu­larly in this area, when it comes to advi­sing on invest­ments in compa­nies where data and data protec­tion, regu­la­tion and digi­ta­liza­tion issues play a major role and which ther­eby achieve a signi­fi­cant inno­va­tion boost for the respec­tive indus­try. Peter Leube has alre­ady advi­sed Vitru­vian on seve­ral tran­sac­tions and refi­nan­cings in the health and health­care sector, among others, such as the part­ner­ship with the doctari group.

For press inqui­ries, please contact:
Carola Rehs, Head of Marke­ting and Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment Germany
T: +49 (0)211 2005 6243, Email: carola.rehs@twobirds.com

Notes for the editor
Bird & Bird is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm that advi­ses in parti­cu­lar compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons that are shaping and being chan­ged by new tech­no­lo­gies and digi­ta­liza­tion. We combine world-class legal exper­tise with deep indus­try know­ledge and a refres­hin­gly crea­tive mind­set to help clients achieve their busi­ness goals. We have over 1,300 lawy­ers in 29 offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Paci­fic and North America, and main­tain close rela­ti­onships with law firms in other parts of the world. To learn more about us, visit www.twobirds.com.

Frei­burg — High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and two private inves­tors are convin­ced of the importance of cell sepa­ra­tion for the produc­tion of biophar­maceu­ti­cals and for gene­tic analy­ses in rese­arch and diagno­stics. 3 million will be inves­ted in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy, the expan­sion of sales struc­tures and the deve­lo­p­ment of addi­tio­nal fields of appli­ca­tion for Cytena GmbH’s single-cell printer.

The analy­sis of single biolo­gi­cal cells has rapidly gained importance in recent years. Single cells are used in the deve­lo­p­ment of modern drugs, so-called biophar­maceu­ti­cals, as well as in cancer and stem cell rese­arch. Cytena’s family of single-cell prin­ters are labo­ra­tory instru­ments for hand­ling and sort­ing single, vital cells. They repre­sent an inno­va­tive tool for the life scien­ces and make a lasting contri­bu­tion to the deve­lo­p­ment and acce­le­ra­tion of new therapies.

“The tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­tage of the single-cell prin­ter over compe­ting products does not mean that we can rest on it. Our goal is rather to under­stand and serve the needs of the custo­mer better and better. The new capi­tal crea­tes an important basis for this,” says Cytena CFO Benja­min Steimle. In addi­tion, the invest­ment will help to capture further market share. Although the majo­rity of the world’s ten largest phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies are alre­ady custo­mers of the Frei­burg-based start-up, there is still a very large global market poten­tial waiting to be tapped.

Important mile­sto­nes on this path so far have included the recently concluded sales coope­ra­tion with an Ameri­can company and the expan­sion of the product family to include the x.sight devices. “The current round of finan­cing now puts us in a posi­tion to acce­le­rate the next steps for Cytena’s success story,” Steimle said.

Dr. Lena Krzy­zak, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF: “With our Series A invest­ment, we want to build on the previous growth success of the seed funding. The company has deve­lo­ped rapidly and we have great confi­dence in the manage­ment team for further market expan­sion and product development.”

About Cytena
Cyten­aTM is an estab­lished life science start-up. Spun off from the Frei­burg Insti­tute for Micro­sys­tems Engi­nee­ring (IMTEK) in 2014, Cytena mainly sells solu­ti­ons for cell hand­ling. The Cytena team has deve­lo­ped the paten­ted single-cell prin­terTM tech­no­logy, which allows the sepa­ra­tion of cells in a docu­men­ted, gentle and sterile process. The single-cell prin­ters have been manu­fac­tu­red in Germany and marke­ted world­wide since 2015. In 2018, the tech­no­logy was expan­ded to include the x.sightTM range of devices. A large propor­tion of the top ten phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies use single-cell prin­ters to produce clonal cell lines for anti­body production.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 500 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 around 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, and 32 commer­cial enterprises.

Frank­furt, March 21, 2019 — Busi­ness law firm FPS provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to main incu­ba­tor GmbH, the rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment unit of Commerz­bank Group, on its venture capi­tal invest­ment in Dutch FinTech start-up Conpend, led by attor­ney Phil­ipp Weber.

main incu­ba­tor GmbH, the rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment unit of Commerz­bank Group, is inves­t­ing a six-figure sum in the Dutch FinTech start-up Conpend. Conpend digi­ti­zes the mostly manual and paper-heavy proces­ses in the trade finance busi­ness. Conpend’s TRAFINAS soft­ware solu­tion enables banks to digi­tize today’s trade finance process within a few months, redu­cing proces­sing time by up to 50 percent.

main incu­ba­tor GmbH, a wholly owned subsi­diary of Commerz­bank, rese­ar­ches future tech­no­lo­gies such as block­chain, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and robo­tics and uses exis­ting solu­ti­ons or deve­lops its own for the banking of the future.

Head­quar­te­red in the Nether­lands, start-up Conpend works closely with stra­te­gic part­ners to support a global custo­mer base. Conpend’s focus is on the compli­ance-compli­ant digi­tiza­tion and auto­ma­tion of trade finance, and thanks to market-leading tech­no­logy, the start-up simpli­fies back-office proces­ses and enables the reduc­tion of risks.

Advi­sors to main incu­ba­tor GmbH: FPS Fritze Wicke Seelig, Frank­furt am Main
Phil­ipp Weber, Asso­ciate Part­ner, Lead Part­ner (Venture Capi­tal, M&A, Corporate);
AKD Advo­ca­ten, Nether­lands: Natha­lie van Woer­kom, Part­ner, Lead (Dutch law)

Colo­gne, Germany — gridscale, the Colo­gne-based provi­der of inno­va­tive Infra­struc­ture-as-a-Service and Plat­form-as-a-Service (IaaS and PaaS) solu­ti­ons, recei­ves €7 million in new capi­tal in its Series A finan­cing round. The round is led by Endeit Capi­tal and EnBW New Ventures. In addi­tion, the exis­ting inves­tors Enjoy­Ven­ture with the BLSW Seed and Growth Fund as well as the High-Tech Grün­der­fonds parti­ci­pa­ted. The capi­tal now available will be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of gridscale in terms of tech­no­logy and person­nel as well as for the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the business.

gridscale offers custo­mers the possi­bi­lity to flexi­bly realize complex hosting and infra­struc­ture projects. The alre­ady high degree of auto­ma­tion of the plat­form will be further expan­ded by gridscale. Here, the company adhe­res to the prin­ci­ple of real-time scaling of the infra­struc­ture with minute-by-minute billing. Custo­mers such as Control­ware, KOMSA, Butlers or the Karls­ru­her Verkehrs­be­triebe actually only pay for the resour­ces they actually need when they use them.

The company will expand its PaaS appli­ca­tion offe­rings and provide addi­tio­nal services to indi­rect sales chan­nels. System houses and agen­cies alre­ady make use of gridscale’s intel­li­gent compon­ents. The white label solu­tion addres­ses the speci­fic needs of these part­ners and offers them the oppor­tu­nity to become relia­ble cloud provi­ders themselves.

“We are very convin­ced of the poten­tial of gridscale’s tech­no­logy and team. gridscale has posi­tio­ned itself with an inno­va­tive solu­tion in the $50 billion and high-growth global IaaS and PaaS market. We are very proud to now be part of gridscale and to be able to accom­pany them in their brand posi­tio­ning and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion,” empha­si­zes Martijn Hamann, Part­ner at Endeit Capi­tal. Holger Wagner, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at EnBW New Ventures adds: “The team combi­nes tech­ni­cal exper­tise, market know­ledge and a feel for the speci­fic requi­re­ments of custo­mers. We are plea­sed to be part of this development.”

Henrik Hasen­kamp, co-foun­der and CEO of gridscale, is plea­sed with the successful closing of the finan­cing round: “In the end, people always work toge­ther. Endeit Capi­tal and EnBW New Ventures stood out from a large number of VCs that showed equal inte­rest in the tech­no­logy and the team — a perfect match to our exis­ting share­hol­ders. With the support of Endeit Capi­tal and EnBW New Ventures, we are in a posi­tion to once again signi­fi­cantly acce­le­rate our growth while simul­ta­neously releasing a variety of new products and services. This is because we want to estab­lish oursel­ves as a secure, scalable and relia­ble cloud service provi­der in other parts of Europe in particular.”

About gridscale
gridscale is a Euro­pean IaaS and PaaS provi­der and crea­tes the basis for sophisti­ca­ted cloud solu­ti­ons with its inno­va­tive tech­no­logy. Head­quar­te­red in Colo­gne, Germany, the company’s highly auto­ma­ted archi­tec­ture offers forward-looking and digi­tally orien­ted users a solu­tion in which they can flexi­bly choose between a variety of Infra­struc­ture-as-a-Service compon­ents (e.g., distri­bu­ted storage solu­ti­ons, load balan­cers and virtual servers) and comple­men­tary Plat­form-as-a-Service elements (e.g., auto­ma­ti­cally scaling data­ba­ses and IoT compon­ents). gridscale was foun­ded in 2014 by Henrik Hasen­kamp, Michael Balser and Tors­ten Urbas. The 2018 Crisp Vendor Universe Report sees gridscale as an inno­va­tor in cloud compu­ting services.

With its inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, gridscale takes cloud compu­ting to a new level-intel­li­gent compon­ents of the gridscale cloud connect seam­lessly with all other enter­prise IT resour­ces and extend the exis­ting infra­struc­ture. The requi­red cloud resour­ces are available to users in real time and can be easily inte­gra­ted into exis­ting company and system proces­ses, also thanks to the intui­tive user inter­face. This allows gridscale custo­mers to focus on their core compe­ten­cies instead of deal­ing with the opera­tion of their cloud infra­struc­ture, while still main­tai­ning an over­view at all times thanks to trans­pa­rent proces­sing and minute-by-minute billing.

San Fran­cisco (USA)/ Berlin — Brea­kout company Auto­ma­tion Hero has secu­red a $14.5 million invest­ment led by Atomico and backed by Baidu and Cherry Ventures that will help it become a leader in next-gene­ra­tion AI and data-centric intel­li­gent process auto­ma­tion (IPA). The startup company aims to drama­ti­cally shift the market for robot-driven process auto­ma­tion (RPA) in an envi­ron­ment where compa­nies are looking for new ways to auto­mate busi­ness and IT processes.

The company’s mission is to help infor­ma­tion workers by auto­ma­ting mundane, repe­ti­tive tasks, free­ing up more time for more fulfil­ling, value-added acti­vi­ties like inter­ac­ting with custo­mers. Ben Blume, Prin­ci­pal of Atomico, joins Auto­ma­tion Hero’s Board of Direc­tors as part of this latest round of funding.

For the Auto­ma­tion Hero team, rapidly buil­ding disrup­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies is not new terri­tory. Foun­der Stefan Groschupf (photo) has over 25 years of expe­ri­ence in the field of machine lear­ning and was one of the first Big Data acti­vists to work on the Apache Hadoop project. The team and Groschupf foun­ded the award-winning Big Data busi­ness intel­li­gence company Data­meer in 2009, which counts more than 50 percent of Fortune 50 compa­nies among its custo­mers and has secu­red a spot in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Busi­ness Intel­li­gence and Analy­tics in just five years.

RPA + AI = IPA
The market for RPA has seen tremen­dous growth in recent years, but the current tech­no­logy was deve­lo­ped over a decade ago and is limi­ted to auto­ma­ting simple, repe­ti­tive click robots. Data inte­gra­tion, proces­sing, and machine lear­ning are added after the fact. Ther­e­fore, the intel­li­gent auto­ma­tion of more deman­ding busi­ness proces­ses in complex IT envi­ron­ments remains a challenge.

Auto­ma­tion Hero’s AI- and Big Data-centric intel­li­gent process auto­ma­tion plat­form tack­les the problem with an enti­rely new approach. Instead of running auto­ma­ti­ons as isola­ted robots, Auto­ma­tion Hero’s plat­form runs highly scalable, distri­bu­ted auto­ma­tion work­flows that combine click robots, struc­tu­red and unstruc­tu­red data sources, Deep Lear­ning, data proces­sing, and workers into an intel­li­gence network that crea­tes an opera­ting system for modern businesses.

The company is alre­ady seeing explo­sive global growth, parti­cu­larly in large sales orga­niza­ti­ons where the return on invest­ment gene­ra­ted by auto­ma­tion is high. The three main use cases focus on elimi­na­ting manual, repe­ti­tive, time-consum­ing tasks, auto­ma­ting common custo­mer inqui­ries that arise, and support­ing sales rep decis­ion making. Custo­mers in the finan­cial services, tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, travel and tourism indus­tries report hundreds of milli­ons of dollars in return on invest­ment by saving their employees up to an hour of work per day.

New finan­cing to acce­le­rate global growth
This next round of funding was raised in just 12 months, brin­ging the total invest­ment to $19 million. It is used to acce­le­rate the growth of Auto­ma­tion Hero. The team most recently welco­med Peter Voss, former CTO of Data­meer, to its midst.

About Auto­ma­tion Hero
Auto­ma­tion Hero combi­nes RPA with AI to create a plat­form for intel­li­gent process auto­ma­tion that connects AI with the human work­force. By auto­ma­ting repe­ti­tive and time-consum­ing tasks, Auto­ma­tion Hero impro­ves produc­ti­vity and deli­vers more successful, opti­mi­zed busi­ness results.

Auto­ma­tion Hero is a port­fo­lio company of the leading capi­tal invest­ment compa­nies in AI and Deep Lear­ning ̶ Baidu USA, CometLabs, Cherry Ventures, signals VC and Atomico ̶ and is head­quar­te­red in San Fran­cisco (USA).

Berlin / Abu Dhabi — In Series B, the Wefox Group recei­ves finan­cing in the amount of USD 125 million. Muba­d­ala Invest­ment Company, sove­reign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, leads the round — the capi­tal comes from the newly laun­ched Euro­pean Ventures Fund. In addi­tion, Credi­tease, a Chinese fintech, is joining the Berlin-based company to help with its expan­sion in China. In addi­tion, the US bank Gold­man Sachs is inves­t­ing. Addi­tio­nal funds are contri­bu­ted by exis­ting backers: Hori­zon Ventures, Idin­vest Part­ners, Seed­camp, Speed­in­vest and Target Global are again on board.

Insur­tech wants to expand into the Asian market
The insur­tech also wants to expand: the focus is on the Asian market. Insurtechs are beco­ming incre­asingly popu­lar with inves­tors. They are crea­ting busi­ness models that can digi­tize a previously largely analog market and are thus follo­wing on from the success of fintechs. These have been digi­tiz­ing the banking indus­try for years with the finan­cial support of large inves­tors and some­ti­mes also through part­ner­ships with estab­lished play­ers. Take N26, for exam­ple: in Janu­ary, the fintech raised USD 300 million and joined the club of Unicorns. Insurtechs create simi­lar added value. Start­ups give insu­r­ers the option to moder­nize their own busi­ness via outside inno­va­tion. Not only finan­cial inves­tors but also large corpo­ra­tes are reac­ting to this with incre­asing commit­ment: Alli­anz, for exam­ple. In Febru­ary, the Group increased the volume of its venture capi­tal arm Alli­anz X to EUR 1 billion.

A legal dispute has delayed the big funding round, says startup CEO Julian Teicke. The lawsuit filed by U.S. compe­ti­tor Lemo­nade against Wefox was about copy­right infrin­ge­ment, among other things, and the two compa­nies reached a sett­le­ment seve­ral months later.

Insu­rance brokers can digi­tally manage their custo­mers’ poli­cies via the Wefox plat­form. Custo­mers have access to their insu­rance poli­cies via the Wefox app and can report claims or clarify ques­ti­ons. Insu­rance One is also part of the parent company Wefox Group.
With the help of the Wefox plat­form, smal­ler insu­rance brokers can digi­tize their insu­rance poli­cies , around 1,000 are expec­ted to use the startup’s service. For the end custo­mer, Wefox’s app has the advan­tage that various insu­rance poli­cies can be mana­ged in one place. In this way, a claim or a change of insu­rance can be orga­ni­zed via smart­phone. The brokers receive a so-called port­fo­lio commis­sion per insu­rance policy, which they share with the startup.

Wefox plans to use the money from the finan­cing round to expand, inclu­ding outside Europe. In coope­ra­tion with the former Soft­bank subsi­diary SBI, the project is to be laun­ched in Japan. A total of 200 employees work for the Berlin-based company

Berlin/Paris — Shift Tech­no­logy, a provi­der of AI solu­ti­ons for fraud iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and claims proces­sing in the global insu­rance indus­try, successfully closes its Series C funding round of $60 million. In total, $100 million has flowed into the company since its inception.

The finan­cing round was led by Besse­mer Venture Part­ners. In addi­tion, legacy inves­tors Accel, Gene­ral Cata­lyst and Iris Capi­tal are re-inves­t­ing in the French-Ameri­can startup. With the fresh capi­tal, Shift intends to expand its global presence — with a focus on the U.S. and Japa­nese markets — as well as invest in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment and further product development.

“We are very exci­ted to be working with the Shift team. The company has built a powerful AI plat­form that is trans­forming the insu­rance market, and we are confi­dent that this is just the begin­ning,” said Charles Birn­baum, Part­ner at Besse­mer Venture Part­ners. “The Shift team has alre­ady had great success with provi­ders around the world and we look forward to support­ing them in their next phase of growth. Digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion is in full swing in the insu­rance indus­try and Shift will help its custo­mers master it.”

Since its foun­ding in 2014, Shift Tech­no­logy has demons­tra­ted excep­tio­nal growth world­wide. The company now employs more than 200 people and serves its custo­mers in Europe, Asia and the USA from its Paris head­quar­ters and other offices in Boston, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Madrid, Singa­pore and Zurich.

FORCE, Shift’s fraud detec­tion solu­tion, is used by insu­r­ers around the world for many diffe­rent areas. The solu­tion gives fraud inves­ti­ga­tors a powerful plat­form. With the help of FORCE, insu­r­ers can also increase their capa­city and process claims more efficiently.

Shift plans to use the cash infu­sion to further expand its fraud iden­ti­fi­ca­tion solu­tion. The focus is on auto­ma­ting the entire claims proces­sing for insu­rance carri­ers and their custo­mers. In this way, insu­rance groups can offer their custo­mers outstan­ding custo­mer service and process cases faster and better than before. AXA Spain, a long-time Shift custo­mer and early adop­ter of the Shift solu­tion, is alre­ady bene­fiting from auto­ma­tion innovations.

In addi­tion to new product inno­va­tion, Shift plans to use this round of funding to deve­lop rapid go-to-market stra­te­gies in key regi­ons. The company conti­nues to expand its U.S. offices in Boston and its offices in Tokyo, and plans to create new posi­ti­ons for data scien­tists, deve­lo­pers, and sales and marke­ting mana­gers. In just over four years, the company has won many of the world’s leading insu­r­ers as custo­mers. The list includes 70 custo­mers from 25 count­ries, inclu­ding AG2R-LA MONDIALE, Credit Agri­cole Paci­fica, Harmo­nie Mutu­elle Groupe VYV, Liberty Mutual, MACIF, MS&AD Insu­rance, Spirica, the Gene­ral Insu­rance Asso­cia­tion from Singa­pore or the Hong Kong Fede­ra­tion of Insurers.

“I’m very proud of what our team — with the support of our great board of direc­tors and super­vi­sory board — has been able to pull off in this rela­tively short period of time,” added Jeremy Jawish, CEO and co-foun­der of Shift Tech­no­logy. “Our AI tech­no­logy helps leading insu­rance groups become more effi­ci­ent and error-free. We support compa­nies in their digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion stra­te­gies and help them increase custo­mer satis­fac­tion. We stron­gly believe that Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence can assist in many areas of claims proces­sing and improve the entire insu­rance policy life­cy­cle. With this invest­ment, we are well posi­tio­ned for the next phase of growth and advancement.”

About Shift Technology
Shift Tech­no­logy offers the only native AI fraud iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and auto­ma­tion solu­tion for claims proces­sing in the global insu­rance indus­try. Our SaaS solu­tion unco­vers indi­vi­dual and broa­der fraud with twice the accu­racy of other solu­ti­ons on the market, helping insu­r­ers make faster and more accu­rate decis­i­ons. Shift was named to the 2018 Global AI Top 100 list by CB Insight. www.shift-technology.com

About Besse­mer Venture Partners
Besse­mer Venture Part­ners is an early-stage inves­tor with the most expe­ri­ence world­wide. The port­fo­lio includes more than 200 compa­nies. Besse­mer helps visio­nary entre­pre­neurs build their compa­nies on a stable foun­da­tion and supports them in every further phase of growth. The firm has supported more than 120 IPOs, inclu­ding those of Shop­ify, Yelp, Linke­dIn, Skype, LifeL­ock, Twilio, Send­Grid, Docu­Sign, Wix or Mind­Body. Bessemer’s total of 15 part­ners operate in Sili­con Valley as well as San Fran­cisco, New York City, Boston, Israel and India. www.bvp.com

About Iris Capital
Iris Capi­tal is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm specia­li­zing in the digi­tal economy. Iris Capi­tal invests in compa­nies at various stages of growth, from start­ups to late-stage and growth play­ers. Due to its parti­cu­lar specia­liza­tion in indi­vi­dual indus­tries and over 30 years of expe­ri­ence, as well as the support of its corpo­rate spon­sors, Iris Capi­tal actively accom­pa­nies the compa­nies in its own port­fo­lio. Iris Capi­tal has offices in Paris, Berlin, San Fran­cisco, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Dubai.
Iris­Next is a fund of Iris Capi­tal, backed as inves­tors by leading compa­nies such as Orange, Publi­cis, Valeo and Bridge­stone, as well as finan­cial inves­tors and insti­tu­ti­ons such as Bpifrance and BRED Banque Popu­laire. Its holdings include Adjust, Careem, Happy­Car, Kyriba, Open-Xchange, Mojio, ReBuy, Scality, Searchme­trics, Shift Tech­no­logy, Studi­temps, Talend, Talon.One and Unu Motors. www.iriscapital.com

Frank­furt a. M. — The Frank­furt office of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP has advi­sed Inven Capi­tal SICAV, a.s. (“INVEN”) on the sale of its share­hol­ding in sonnen Holding GmbH (“sonnen”) toge­ther with further
The inves­tors, inclu­ding GE Ventures, eCapi­tal, MVP, INVEN and SET Ventures have sold their stake in sonnen Holding GmbH (“sonnen”) to Shell Over­seas Invest­ment B.V..

sonnen, head­quar­te­red in Wilpolds­ried, Germany, is a leading global provi­der of intel­li­gent, decen­tra­li­zed elec­tri­city storage systems and a pioneer in tech­no­lo­gies for a clean, decen­tra­li­zed and networked energy system. As one of the fastest growing tech­no­logy compa­nies in Germany and Europe, sonnen has alre­ady been awarded nume­rous inter­na­tio­nal prizes. sonnen is repre­sen­ted with its products in nume­rous count­ries and has its own loca­ti­ons in Germany, Italy, the United King­dom, Austra­lia and the USA. Photo: white “sonnen” char­ger next to elec­tric car being charged.

“sonnen is a leading global provi­der of intel­li­gent, decen­tra­li­zed elec­tri­city storage systems, whose success is based on very custo­mer-orien­ted inno­va­tions. The acqui­si­tion will hence­forth enable us to offer an even wider range of products to our custo­mers who want to choose relia­ble, afforda­ble and clean energy,” said Mark Gains­bo­rough, Shell’s execu­tive vice presi­dent, New Ener­gies. “Toge­ther, in line with Shell’s stra­tegy to provide more and clea­ner energy solu­ti­ons to our custo­mers, we can now move forward to build an energy system that puts the custo­mer first.”

INVEN is a venture capi­tal fund of the ČEZ Group, whose corpo­rate purpose is focu­sed on invest­ments in clean-tech and smart-energy companies.

Advi­sors to INVEN: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The Frank­furt office of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm WEIL advi­sed Inven Capi­tal SICAV, a.s. (“INVEN”) on the sale of its stake in sonnen Holding GmbH (“sonnen”). Weil’s Frank­furt office regu­larly advi­ses INVEN on its invest­ments, such as its invest­ment in the start-up Cloud&Heat Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH and the most recent finan­cing round at Sunfire GmbH.
The Weil tran­sac­tion team was again led by Frank­furt-based Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Kamyar Abrar. He was supported by asso­cia­tes Thomas Weise, Aurel Hille and Stef­fen Giolda (all Corpo­rate, Frankfurt).

eCapi­tal, MVP and SET Ventures were repre­sen­ted in the tran­sac­tion by the Munich office of the law firm GÖRG Rechts­an­wälte, led by corpo­rate part­ners Dr. Bernt Paudtke and Dr. Chris­tian Glauer. Senior Coun­sel Michael Prinz zu Löwen­stein from the Frank­furt office of King & Spal­ding LLP advi­sed GE Ventures.

About SET Ventures
Since 2007, Amster­dam-based SET Ventures has inves­ted in Euro­pean tech­no­logy compa­nies that impact the future of the energy system. SET Ventures focu­ses broadly on inno­va­tive energy gene­ra­tion, energy distri­bu­tion and storage, and energy effi­ci­ency. SET Fund III provi­des early growth-stage capi­tal to ventures that shape the energy system tran­si­tion through smart soft­ware and services-based busi­ness models. For more infor­ma­tion please visit www.setventures.com.

About eCAPI­TAL
eCAPI­TAL AG, based in Müns­ter, is a capi­tal manage­ment company for alter­na­tive invest­ment funds (AIF) accor­ding to the EuVECA regu­la­tion. The company is one of the leading venture capi­tal inves­tors in Germany and has been actively support­ing inno­va­tive entre­pre­neurs in promi­sing indus­tries since 1999. The focus is on fast-growing compa­nies in the software/IT, Indus­try 4.0, clean­tech and new mate­ri­als segments. eCAPI­TAL curr­ently mana­ges six funds with a subscrip­tion capi­tal of over 240 million euros.

About WEIL
Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 300 part­ners. Weil is head­quar­te­red in New York and has offices in Boston, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Sili­con Valley, Warsaw and Washing­ton, D.C.

Hamburg — Five months after the offi­cial launch of the inde­pen­dent online compa­ri­son plat­form for invest­ment products, the company has now secu­red the support of well-known inves­tors and over 3.3 million euros in equity capi­tal for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the online plat­form in a first round of financing.

“We want to give ever­yone inde­pen­dent access to the best and most rele­vant invest­ment products,” says Phil­ipp Schrö­der, CEO of the plat­form. Curr­ently, CAPin­side provi­des its auto­ma­ted real-time compa­ri­sons of over 40,000 invest­ment products as well as their ratings for profes­sio­nal inves­tors free of charge. Thus, the fintech from Hamburg offers the best possi­ble decis­ion support for investors.

“There is hardly an indus­try that has dama­ged itself so much through syste­ma­tic intrans­pa­rency and which, at the same time, is still so little digi­ti­zed as the invest­ment indus­try. And this is despite the fact that invest­ment funds are actually comple­tely unri­va­led as a form of invest­ment due to histo­ri­cally low inte­rest rates,” says Schrö­der, who successfully promo­ted the digi­tiza­tion and demo­no­po­liza­tion of the energy indus­try before foun­ding CAPin­side. “CAPin­side aims to regain trust through trans­pa­rency by deve­lo­ping our compa­ri­son tech­no­logy to help private inves­tors make better and more infor­med finan­cial decis­i­ons in the future,” Schrö­der said.

To ensure this, CAPin­side has now raised fresh capi­tal and will launch a compa­ri­son plat­form in April 2019 that can also be used by non-profes­sio­nal inves­tors. The capi­tal round was led by Thomas Pütter, the well-known venture capi­ta­list and ex-CEO of Alli­anz Capi­tal Part­ners, who also chairs the super­vi­sory board of CAPin­side AG. The inves­tors conti­nue to include Andreas Kupke, co-foun­der of Finanzcheck.de, Chris­toph Oster­mann, foun­der and CEO of the tech­no­logy start-up sonnen, and Alex­an­der Holt­ap­pels, CEO and foun­der of the Hamburg-based soft­ware company SABIO.

Since Septem­ber 2018, over 7,000 profes­sio­nal users have regis­tered with CAPinside.com and over 2 million non-regis­tered users visit the site per month. www.capinside.com

Aachen — Seed Fonds II Aachen makes a further finan­cing invest­ment in Hemo­vent GmbH. Toge­ther with the exis­ting inves­tors MIG-Invest­ment­fonds, NRW.BANK, KfW Banken­gruppe, First Capi­tal Part­ner and the private inves­tor Prof. Dr. Peter Borges, Aache­ner Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft is thus provi­ding the neces­sary funds in the mid seven-digit range. With the fresh capi­tal, the startup wants to realize, among other things, the market launch within the scope of a so-called “post-market study”. With this study, the Hemo­vent system “MOBYBOX” will be used on humans for the first time. In paral­lel, the foun­ders are also seeking US FDA approval.

Tech­no­lo­gi­cal advancements
Hemo­vent GmbH has deve­lo­ped one of the world’s smal­lest porta­ble ECMO systems (Extra Corpo­ral Membrane Oxygena­tion, photo), which supports or even comple­tely takes over the natu­ral cardio­pul­mo­nary func­tion in case of cardio­pul­mo­nary insuf­fi­ci­ency or fail­ure. Since the closing of the previous finan­cing round in June 2017, the Aachen-based startup has successfully comple­ted product deve­lo­p­ment and the veri­fi­ca­tion and vali­da­tion phase. Extre­mely posi­tive results have been achie­ved in the in vivo trials and the company expects CE certi­fi­ca­tion later this year.

“Hemo­vent has been deve­lo­ping very posi­tively since Seed Fonds II’s initial commit­ment,” says Markus Krücke­meier, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Seed Fonds Aachen II’s manage­ment company. “So far, the medtech company has been able to reach all mile­sto­nes and even create addi­tio­nal value in some areas. We are very satis­fied — both with the tech­no­lo­gi­cal and the econo­mic progress.”

“We have set our content mile­sto­nes until mid-2020 and are working with a well-coor­di­na­ted manage­ment team to be able to meet all targets on sche­dule,” says Chris­tof Lenz, CEO and co-foun­der of Hemo­vent GmbH. “In order to firmly estab­lish oursel­ves in the market, we have alre­ady been making cont­acts for years with clini­cal experts and users, insti­tu­tio­na­li­zed indus­try experts, and decis­ion-makers from MedTech groups, and we are repre­sen­ted at trade congresses.”

About Seed Fonds II Aachen
Seed Fonds II Aachen was estab­lished in March 2012 as the succes­sor to the fully finan­ced first Seed Fonds Aachen (invest­ment period: 2007–2011) as a follow-up fund from NRW.BANK’s Seed Fonds Initia­tive. In addi­tion to NRW.BANK, Seed Fonds II Aachen is finan­ced by Spar­kasse Aachen and DSA Invest GmbH, which is backed by Aachen-based DSA Daten- und System­tech­nik GmbH. The Seed Fund provi­des young compa­nies in the start-up phase with the neces­sary equity capi­tal and thus stimu­la­tes the deve­lo­p­ment of future-orien­ted tech­no­lo­gies in the Aachen econo­mic region. In 2018, the seed fund was laun­ched for the third time and for the first time also includes the Mönchen­glad­bach region, as the circle of inves­tors has expan­ded to include Spar­kasse Mönchengladbach.

Behind the opera­tio­nal manage­ment of the fund (FM Fonds-Manage­ment für die Region Aachen Betei­li­gungs-GmbH) are the invest­ment experts of the S‑UBG Group. The invest­ment company of the savings banks in the Aachen, Krefeld and Mönchen­glad­bach area looks back on more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence in finan­cing medium-sized compa­nies and tech­no­logy-orien­ted start-ups. www.seedfonds-aachen.de; www.s‑ubg.de.

Munich — Mecu­ris GmbH, a Munich-based medi­cal tech­no­logy start-up focu­sing on the digi­tiza­tion of pros­the­ses and ortho­tics, successfully closes a Series A finan­cing round of €3.6 million. In addi­tion to the exis­ting seed inves­tors Bayern Kapi­taland High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal, Mulcan Inter­na­tio­nal Invest­ments and one of the top five hospi­tal chains in Germany are newly on board.

Every pati­ent is unique. The requi­re­ments that ortho­pe­dic tech­ni­ci­ans have to meet in their care are ther­e­fore just as complex — with constantly incre­asing cost and time pres­sure. For this reason, off-the-shelf ortho­ses or pros­the­ses have often been used up to now. They serve their purpose, but do not fit ideally.

This is where Mecu­ris inter­venes in the supply process. The young company aims to signi­fi­cantly improve the quality of life for pati­ents while saving ortho­pe­dic tech­ni­ci­ans time and money. The aim is to work toge­ther with ortho­pe­dic tech­ni­ci­ans and wearers to design pati­ent-speci­fic ortho­ses and pros­the­ses that are as indi­vi­dual in their func­tion­a­lity as they are in their design, color and struc­ture. To this end, Mecu­ris provi­des ortho­tists with an easy-to-use online plat­form, the Mecu­ris Solu­tion Plat­form, with which they can tailor ortho­ses and pros­the­ses. These are manu­fac­tu­red using 3D prin­ting and deli­vered within a few days. In addi­tion, the start-up offers services for medi­cal supply stores to trans­fer ortho­pe­dic products into a digi­tal process chain, bring them to market quickly and make them scalable in sales.

The approach of using and mone­tiz­ing digi­tiza­tion for perso­na­li­zed ortho­tics and prosthe­tics has convin­ced the new and exis­ting inves­tors. The foun­ding team was able to attract three new inves­tors for the Series A finan­cing: Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal III SICAR, MII Mulcan Inter­na­tio­nal Invest­ments GmbH and one of the five largest hospi­tal chains in Germany and Europe. The latter aims to open up digi­tiza­tion for its part­ners — the medi­cal supply stores. In addi­tion, the seed inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds Manage­ment GmbH (HTGF) have contin­ued to support the company’s goals.

Mecu­ris will use the proceeds from the finan­cing round to deve­lop the Euro­pean market and streng­then sales. In addi­tion, the start-up will conti­nue to deve­lop new digi­tal solu­ti­ons to comple­ment its own port­fo­lio and fill market gaps that other play­ers have not yet been able to serve.

About Mecu­ris GmbH
Mecu­ris works closely with certi­fied ortho­tists (OTs) to bring ortho­tics & prosthe­tics into the digi­tal age. By bund­ling 3D tech­no­lo­gies in an intui­tive Mecu­ris Solu­tion Plat­form, Mecu­ris OTs are able to design custo­mi­zed ortho­ses & pros­the­ses in a cost- and time-saving way, making their work much easier. OTs are enab­led on the plat­form to custo­mize product ideas for speci­fic pati­ents without CAD design skills and work with the wearer to realize design wishes. This impro­ves the quality of life of the users enorm­ously: they have the chance to quickly become active again and live their indi­vi­dua­lity. Thanks to CE marking and ISO certi­fi­ca­tion, Mecu­ris products meet the highest safety stan­dards and are reim­bur­sed by all health insu­rance compa­nies in Germany.

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 290 million euros of venture capi­tal in 265 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 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) is a seed inves­tor that finan­ces tech­no­logy-driven start-ups with high poten­tial. With a total invest­ment volume of 892.5 million euros across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported 500 start-ups since 2005. Driven by their exper­tise, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion, a team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the deve­lo­p­ment of young compa­nies. HTGF focu­ses on high-tech start-ups in various indus­tries, inclu­ding soft­ware, hard­ware and life sciences/chemicals.

HTGF can point to success stories such as Mister Spex, Rigon­tec, 6Wunderkinder, Next Kraft­werke and Cumu­lo­city, as well as Juniqe, an online store for art lovers. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have contri­bu­ted over EUR 1.9 billion to the HTGF port­fo­lio via around 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds.
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de

About MII Mulcan Inter­na­tio­nal Investments 
MULCAN is an inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment company focu­sed on growth invest­ments in the manu­fac­tu­ring, indus­trial and service sectors throug­hout Europe (with a parti­cu­lar empha­sis on Eastern Europe), the Middle East and other deve­lo­ping countries.
www.mulcan.de

About Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal Part­ners S.à r.L
Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal (Vesa­lius), the specia­li­zed life scien­ces venture capi­tal inves­tor, has been support­ing human health compa­nies through venture capi­tal funds since 2007. Since its incep­tion, Vesa­lius has raised over 260 million euros in three funds and contri­bu­ted to the deve­lo­p­ment of over 25 compa­nies. The invest­ment port­fo­lio is balan­ced between invest­ments in drug deve­lo­p­ment and invest­ments in non-drug deve­lo­p­ment. In addi­tion, Vesa­lius is commit­ted to provi­ding capi­tal to science-backed inno­va­tion and ambi­tious entre­pre­neurs, with a focus on an exit within five years. www.vesaliusbiocapital.com

Munich — In fiscal year 2018, BayStartUP ’s inves­tor network arran­ged over 62 million euros in capi­tal for start­ups in a total of 50 finan­cing rounds: from medi­cal tech­no­logy to 3D prin­ting and digi­tal twins to apps for last-minute flights — in terms of content, start­ups from Bava­ria are extre­mely broadly posi­tio­ned. 42.7 million came from venture capi­tal compa­nies, public inves­tors and stra­te­gic inves­tors. Private inves­tors have inves­ted a total of 20 million euros and are invol­ved in three-quar­ters of the deals. Successfully funded start­ups include teams such as inveox, All3DP, Hofmann & Stir­ner and Let’s Yalla. The BayStartUP inves­tor network is one of the most important cont­act points in Bava­ria for start­ups looking for capital.

The focus of the deals broke­red by BayStartUP is on the early stage: 44 of the funded teams (88%) are youn­ger than 3 years. 26% of the finan­cing rounds fall into the pre-seed phase, 52% into the seed phase and 22% into the series A phase. Busi­ness angels were invol­ved in 74% of the deals. “This shows that busi­ness angels are an indis­pensable part of early-stage finan­cing and that the importance of angel capi­tal has contin­ued to grow over the years,” says Dr. Cars­ten Rudolph (photo), mana­ging direc­tor of BayStartUP. In total, the finan­cing rounds range from 50,000 euros to 6,000,000 euros. The highest invest­ment by a busi­ness angel was just under 2 million euros. In fiscal year 2018, the BayStartUP inves­tor network attrac­ted around 40 new busi­ness angels. “The topic is meeting with incre­asing inte­rest, parti­cu­larly among entre­pre­neurs from German SMEs,” says Rudolph. Curr­ently, start­ups have cont­act oppor­tu­ni­ties with around 300 private as well as over 100 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors via the BayStartUP inves­tor network.

When it comes to finan­cing brokerage, BayStartUP acts as a neutral and non-commer­cial cont­act for start­ups and inves­tors. The network is supported by the Bava­rian Minis­try of Econo­mic Affairs. “We will conti­nue to keep our acti­vi­ties in the startup sector at a high level in the future. Offe­rings supported by the Bava­rian Minis­try of Econo­mic Affairs, such as those of BayStartUP, make a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to young inno­va­tive compa­nies gaining access to capi­tal and expert know­ledge, espe­ci­ally in the Bava­rian regi­ons,” says Bavaria’s Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger. “This is an important prere­qui­site for them to successfully estab­lish their busi­ness models in the market.”

Compa­nies supported by BayStartUP are curr­ently active on the market with over 13,100 employees and gene­rate a turno­ver of almost 1.4 billion euros (as of 2017). Many compa­nies that are successful today got off the ground with BayStartUP, inclu­ding success stories such as Flix­bus, eGym, Maga­zino, Voxel­jet, numa­res, Transpo­reon and va-Q-tec AG. www.baystartup.de

 

Aachen — Seed Fonds III für die Region Aachen und Mönchen­glad­bach GmbH & Co KG, part of the S‑UBG Group, is inves­t­ing in the mobi­lity plat­form MOQO toge­ther with DSA Invest II GmbH. The MOQO brand stands for a soft­ware-as-a-service offe­ring opera­ted by Digi­tal Mobi­lity Solu­ti­ons GmbH. It provi­des small and locally active provi­ders of carsha­ring, bikesha­ring and other mobi­lity concepts with the infra­struc­ture they need to estab­lish their own mobi­lity service within four weeks. MOQO provi­des the neces­sary tech­no­lo­gies for this and also offers a compre­hen­sive service, inclu­ding consul­ting and manage­ment of the conver­sion and main­ten­ance of the vehicles.

The manage­ment team, consis­ting of Dr. Michael Minis (CEO) and Markus Harm­sen (CTO), was alre­ady co-foun­ders of tamyca, a plat­form for private car sharing. Toge­ther with their team and the venture capi­tal fund Kizoo Tech­no­logy Capi­tal, they built the plat­form and successfully sold it in 2017. The share­hol­ders will use the proceeds to launch the new busi­ness model of the B2B mobi­lity plat­form MOQO (initi­ally Fleetbutler).

MOQO shared mobi­lity solu­tion meets market need
The main target markets are, on the one hand, car sharing for resi­den­tial comple­xes, repre­sen­ted by the app MOQO HOME, and, on the other hand, company vehicle fleets, repre­sen­ted by MOQO WORK. Howe­ver, dedi­ca­ted carsha­ring in various use cases as well as carsha­ring offers outside the MOQO app are also part of the port­fo­lio. With the MOQO brand, Digi­tal Mobi­lity Solu­ti­ons GmbH, as an infra­struc­ture provi­der, forms the inter­face between vehicle opera­tors and vehicle users. The app is the central commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel: Users can reserve and book vehic­les, as well as purchase and sell them digi­tally. Opera­tors can account for trips, manage vehic­les and check their condi­tion. Since the launch of its B2B service, MOQO has alre­ady acqui­red a large number of custo­mers, inclu­ding housing asso­cia­ti­ons, car dealer­ships and leasing companies.

“We offer our custo­mers the maxi­mum degree of auto­ma­tion of sharing proces­ses. This makes the solu­tion econo­mical even for small sharing provi­ders,” says Michael Minis.

High demand for alter­na­tive mobi­lity concepts
“MOQO meets a growing market need. Demand for alter­na­tive mobi­lity concepts is rising. With over two million active car-sharing users, Germany alre­ady occu­p­ies a leading posi­tion. As MOQO also empowers smal­ler provi­ders with the neces­sary infra­struc­ture to estab­lish a sharing service them­sel­ves, the solu­tion contri­bu­tes to the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the car sharing market,” says Bern­hard Kugel, Mana­ging Direc­tor of the manage­ment company of the Seed Fonds Aachen and Mönchen­glad­bach. “With its focus on the target markets of the real estate indus­try, public utili­ties and company fleets, MOQO has found a promi­sing market niche,” says Björn Lang, the respon­si­ble invest­ment mana­ger of the Aachen and Mönchen­glad­bach seed fund.

Vision: Mobi­lity on Demand
In a consor­tium around the Aachen-based elec­tric vehicle manufacturer
e‑GO Mobile AG, the MOQO team is also invol­ved in the deve­lo­p­ment of the Urban Move plat­form, a custo­mer-centric service plat­form for highly auto­ma­ted, elec­tri­cally driven mini­bu­ses (“People­Mo­ver”). With their know­ledge of the intel­li­gent gene­ra­tion, evalua­tion, use and networ­king of data, the MOQO experts are to steer self-driving shut­tle buses on this plat­form. The MOQO experts are pursuing a vision: “I want my child­ren to expe­ri­ence mobi­lity in the same way that we now buy music on Spotify and movies on Netflix: Cars, bikes and scoo­ters should be just a click away,” says Michael Minis.

About Seed Fonds III Aachen and Mönchengladbach
The “Seed Fonds III für die Region Aachen und Mönchen­glad­bach GmbH & Co. KG” is one of eleven regio­nal start-up funds that NRW.BANK imple­ments with regio­nal invest­ment part­ners in North Rhine-West­pha­lia. Seed Fonds III Aachen provi­des young compa­nies in the start-up phase with the neces­sary equity capi­tal on a long-term basis. The fund can invest a maxi­mum of three million euros per company, and signi­fi­cantly more with co-inves­tors. The Seed Fonds II Aachen has been disbur­sed after about five years and a second follow-up fund — the Seed Fonds III Aachen and Mönchen­glad­bach — has been estab­lished from NRW.BANK’s seed fund initiative.

Tübingen/Schlieren (Switz­er­land) - SHS V, a fund mana­ged by Tübin­gen-based SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment, is inves­t­ing in Swiss evitria AG toge­ther with AFINUM. The life science company supplies large phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech compa­nies with custom anti­bo­dies for rese­arch. For SHS, it is the first invest­ment from the SHS V fund, which had its first closing in July 2018.

evitria AG, based in Schlie­ren near Zurich, is a service provi­der for the produc­tion of custo­mi­zed anti­bo­dies. The company has a track record of more than 5,000 anti­body-based mole­cu­les produ­ced. evitria’s custo­mers are leading global phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies as well as acade­mic labo­ra­to­ries and biotech compa­nies from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Many of the world’s top-selling drugs are thera­peu­tic anti­bo­dies. Accor­din­gly, drug deve­lo­pers are inten­si­vely rese­ar­ching further anti­body-based drugs against dise­a­ses such as cancer or neuro­lo­gi­cal disor­ders such as demen­tia. For this, they need specia­li­zed and relia­ble suppli­ers. The market in which evitria opera­tes will ther­e­fore conti­nue to grow dyna­mi­cally in the coming years.

SHS and AFINUM acquire a stake in evitria AG, which was foun­ded in 2010, with the aim of tapping into new custo­mer groups and estab­li­shing a busi­ness unit in the USA to serve the market there directly. This is the first joint invest­ment for SHS and AFINUM.

Corne­lius Maas, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at SHS, says: “We are very plea­sed to join forces with AFINUM and the expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team to further deve­lop this fast-growing company inter­na­tio­nally. The anti­body produc­tion process at evitria is charac­te­ri­zed by high effi­ci­ency, quality and stabi­lity combi­ned with very short deli­very times. In short, evitria combi­nes an estab­lished, leading market posi­tion with high growth poten­tial. These charac­te­ristics guide all further invest­ments of our SHS‑V fund.”

About SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH
Tübin­gen-based SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment invests in medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science compa­nies with a focus on expan­sion finan­cing, share­hol­der chan­ges and succes­sion situa­tions. In doing so, SHS enters into both mino­rity and majo­rity share­hol­dings. As an expe­ri­en­ced indus­try inves­tor, the company, which was foun­ded in 1993, supports the growth of its port­fo­lio compa­nies through a network of colla­bo­ra­ti­ons, for exam­ple in the intro­duc­tion of new products, regu­la­tory issues or entry into addi­tio­nal markets. The German and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors in SHS funds include profes­sio­nal pension funds, pension funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, funds of funds, family offices, entre­pre­neurs and the SHS manage­ment team. The equity invest­ment of the AIFM-regis­tered company is up to € 30 million, volu­mes excee­ding this can be imple­men­ted with a network of co-inves­tors. Follo­wing the first closing of SHS’s fifth fund of more than EUR 90 million in July 2018, invest­ments are alre­ady being made from the fund. The final closing will take place in July 2019.

www.shs-capital.eu

Berlin — The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) has inves­ted EUR 50 million in the German venture capi­tal fund copa­rion. copa­rion was origi­nally laun­ched by the ERP Special Fund (German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy) and KfW with a volume of EUR 225 million. The EIB’s parti­ci­pa­tion now increa­ses the fund volume to EUR 275 million.

As a co-invest­ment fund, copa­rion invests in young, high-growth and tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies toge­ther with private sector inves­tors, ther­eby support­ing the venture capi­tal market in Germany. Through the co-invest­ments, the inten­ded total invest­ment volume of copa­rion (toge­ther with co-inves­tors) amounts to appro­xi­m­ately EUR 550 million.

The EIB is a long-term lending insti­tu­tion of the Euro­pean Union whose share­hol­ders are the EU Member States. The invest­ment in copa­rion is linked to the goal of streng­thening the emer­ging venture capi­tal market in Germany as well. The invest­ment is part of the so-called Invest­ment Offen­sive for Europe (“Juncker Plan”), which aims to create jobs by inves­t­ing in Europe.

Advi­sing EIB: P+P Pöllath + Part­ners provi­ded compre­hen­sive contrac­tual, tax, regu­la­tory and corpo­rate law advice to EIB in complex nego­tia­ti­ons on its invest­ment in copa­rion with the follo­wing private funds team.
Tarek Mardini (photo), LL.M. (UConn), Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Private Funds, Berlin), Dr. Chris­tian Hille­brand, M.Litt. (St. Andrews), Senior Asso­ciate (Private Funds, Berlin), Dr. Joachim Mogck, LL.M. (San Fran­cisco), Senior Asso­ciate (Private Funds, Berlin).

Inhouse legal advice to the EIB was provi­ded by Dr. Chris­toph Diesel and Thomas Lugez.

Advi­sor to copa­rion: Dr. Wolf­gang Weit­nauer (Weit­nauer Rechts­an­wälte, Munich).

Munich / Frank­furt am Main — Munich-based tele­me­di­cine company Tele­Cli­nic has successfully closed its Series A finan­cing and recei­ved a capi­tal commit­ment of seven million euros from Idin­vest Part­ners to expand its market leader­ship in telemedicine.

Idin­vest Part­ners is a Euro­pean invest­ment company specia­li­zing in the SME segment, with more than eight billion euros in assets under manage­ment, which has alre­ady comple­ted more than 4,000 finan­cings throug­hout Europe. As one of the largest Euro­pean venture capi­tal inves­tors, Idin­vest Part­ners is able to support port­fo­lio compa­nies from seed finan­cing to later finan­cing stages. The company has previously funded digi­tal pioneers such as Allt­hings, Deezer, Wefox and Withings.

Just in Novem­ber 2017, Tele­Cli­nic had closed a seed finan­cing of two million euros. Now the next big step is about to be taken to scale the busi­ness model and provide digi­tal access to medi­cal care for milli­ons more pati­ents. New stra­te­gic part­ner­ships and marke­ting measu­res are plan­ned for this purpose.

Today, 50 percent of all private pati­ents in Germany alre­ady have free digi­tal access to doctors from 30 special­ties thanks to Tele­Cli­nic. The number of people with statu­tory health insu­rance is around nine million. This makes Tele­Cli­nic part of stan­dard care. For private pati­ents, e‑prescriptions are possi­ble throug­hout Germany via Tele­Cli­nic. For this purpose, the company coope­ra­tes with 7,000 phar­macies. Those with statu­tory health insu­rance are to follow suit in 2019 — initi­ally as part of a pilot project. Medi­cal services are available seven days a week, around the clock, and on holidays.

With annual growth of 3.8 percent, the health­care sector is growing signi­fi­cantly faster than the gross dome­stic product (source: BMWI Gesund­heits­wirt­schaft Zahlen und Fakten 2016). The health­care indus­try is thus a growth sector that is not depen­dent on econo­mic cycles. The private sector, for exam­ple medi­cal products or e‑health appli­ca­ti­ons, accounts for 21.3 percent of value added. Tele­me­di­cine is seen as a promi­sing future market.

Katha­rina Jünger (photo) , CEO of Tele­Cli­nicis convin­ced that tele­me­di­cine will play a central role in the German health­care system in the future: “The digi­tiza­tion of the health­care system is curr­ently advan­cing in leaps and bounds. We are actively helping to shape this deve­lo­p­ment and want to use Tele­Cli­nic to ensure digi­tal access to high-quality primary care across the coun­try. Germany needs tele­me­di­cine to effi­ci­ently meet chal­lenges such as demo­gra­phic change. People are getting older and, as a result, spen­ding is rising. Tele­con­sul­ta­tion alone has an esti­ma­ted bene­fit poten­tial of 4.4 billion euros. We are plea­sed to have gained a strong part­ner in Idin­vest Part­ners to digi­tally shape the future of health.”

Matthieu Baret, Mana­ging Part­ner at Idin­vest Part­ners and respon­si­ble for Venture and Growth Capi­tal, said: “Idin­vest Part­ners has made a name for itself as one of the highest-profile venture capi­tal inves­tors in Europe with invest­ments in well-known and successful compa­nies in the digi­tal and health­care indus­tries. The invest­ment in Tele­Cli­nic repres­ents another mile­stone in this stra­tegy. Tele­Cli­nic is a pioneer in a promi­sing busi­ness area and a market with great poten­tial. In an envi­ron­ment of demo­gra­phic change and incre­asing gaps in medi­cal care in rural areas, the company fulfills an important social mission. We are plea­sed to support Tele­Cli­nic in fulfil­ling this mission.”

About Tele­Cli­nic
Tele­Cli­nic is a digi­tal health plat­form and first point of cont­act for people who have ques­ti­ons about their health. The Tele­Cli­nic physi­ci­ans are available for pati­ents seven days a week and at any time of day — without long waiting times. Only physi­ci­ans with a German license to prac­tice medi­cine are admit­ted to Tele­Cli­nic. Medi­cal consul­ta­tion takes place via modern and nowa­days common commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. The pati­ent can choose whether the doctor’s conver­sa­tion takes place via video chat or on the phone, for exam­ple. Tele­Cli­nic is also a digi­tal pioneer in the area of e‑prescription: e‑prescriptions have been possi­ble for priva­tely insu­red pati­ents since the begin­ning of 2018. To this end, the company coope­ra­tes with 7,000 phar­macies in private prac­tice. To ensure that pati­ents can use the services of the Tele­Cli­nic free of charge, the company coope­ra­tes with various payers. Curr­ently, eight private health insu­r­ers and four statu­tory health insu­r­ers coope­rate with Tele­Cli­nic. In addi­tion, as part of the coope­ra­tion with the Asso­cia­tion of Statu­tory Health Insu­rance Physi­ci­ans in Baden-Würt­tem­berg, all statu­tory health insu­rance funds in Baden-Würt­tem­berg bear the costs for digi­tal health services via the Tele­Cli­nic infrastructure.

Data secu­rity is a top prio­rity: the Tele­Cli­nic app ther­e­fore complies with the requi­re­ments of the Medi­cal Devices Act for CE certi­fi­ca­tion. TeleClinic’s mission is to deve­lop digi­tal and effi­ci­ent alter­na­ti­ves for the German health­care system that bene­fit pati­ents, insu­rance compa­nies, health insu­r­ers and doctors. www.teleclinic.com

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 Dubai. 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 merged with Eura­zeo. The merger has crea­ted a leading invest­ment company in Europe and North America with 15 billion euros in assets under management.

Landshut/Würzburg — Bayern Kapi­tal is taking a first-time stake in TNI medi­cal AG (TNI medi­cal) from Würz­burg with its EFRE inno­va­tion fund as part of a new finan­cing round. The company deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and sells devices for venti­la­tion therapy in pati­ents with the so-called respi­ra­tory distress syndrome. This syndrome includes COPD, a chro­nic obstruc­tive pulmo­nary dise­ase that is the fourth leading cause of death globally, accor­ding to the World Health Orga­niza­tion (WHO). Another new inves­tor is the invest­ment company GMH-Ventures GmbH. The exis­ting inves­tors SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH (SHS), Kredit­an­stalt für Wieder­auf­bau(KfW) and Pathena Sicar are also parti­ci­pa­ting in this round. TNI medi­cal intends to use the funds for the further deve­lo­p­ment and world­wide appr­oval of the products as well as for the deve­lo­p­ment of further markets, espe­ci­ally in non-Euro­pean count­ries such as the USA and China.

TNI medi­cal AG, head­quar­te­red in Würz­burg, Germany, was foun­ded about ten years ago as a spin-off of seleon GmbH, an engi­nee­ring service provi­der in the medi­cal tech­no­logy sector. Imme­dia­tely after the spin-off, the company star­ted deve­lo­ping the TNI soft­Flow high-flow venti­la­tor. Another main­stay from the very begin­ning was the trade in diagno­stic and thera­peu­tic products. Follo­wing successful clini­cal trials of the venti­la­tors, SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH (SHS) and Kredit­an­stalt für Wieder­auf­bau (KfW) took a stake in the company in 2010. TNI medi­cal used the funds to further deve­lop the product family.

Pati­ents receive a warm, moist airflow directly into the nose without conden­sa­tion through a thin, heated and noise-opti­mi­zed nasal cannula with the venti­la­tors from the TNI soft­Flow family. The flow rate of the air as well as the humi­dity can be precis­ely adjus­ted and oxygen can be added if neces­sary. This leads to effec­tive treat­ment of pati­ents. In addi­tion, the products are uncom­pli­ca­ted to use, the nasal cannula is easy to put on or take off. In contrast, with many conven­tio­nal venti­la­tors with closed nasal and face masks, pati­ents complain of limi­ted comfort. When trea­ted with TNI venti­la­tors, the pati­ent can conti­nue to do simple things during therapy, such as eating, drin­king, talking, or taking medi­ca­ti­ons. TNI medical’s novel therapy not only achie­ves very good clini­cal results, but also means better tole­r­a­bi­lity for pati­ents compared to tradi­tio­nal mask therapy. TNI medi­cal products are suita­ble for use in clinics as well as at home.

The Bayern Kapi­tal Inno­va­ti­ons­fonds EFRE (BKE) is funded by the Euro­pean Union from the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF). BKE prima­rily finan­ces inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies that are loca­ted outside the Munich metro­po­li­tan area and want to use BKE’s equity capi­tal to deve­lop new products and produc­tion proces­ses and launch and pene­trate them on the market.

Dr. Georg Ried (photo), Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “TNI medi­cal has deve­lo­ped an outstan­ding tech­no­logy that can help many people around the world. In doing so, the team at TNI medi­cal has consis­t­ently thought of the product from the patient’s point of view. In addi­tion to the good econo­mic deve­lo­p­ment, this aspect convin­ced us to invest in TNI medical.”

Rein­hilde Spat­scheck, Chair­wo­man of the Super­vi­sory Board of TNI medi­cal AG and Mana­ging Direc­tor and Part­ner at SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment, says: “TNI medi­cal AG has achie­ved signi­fi­cant mile­sto­nes in the deve­lo­p­ment, appr­oval and clini­cal test­ing of the TNI soft­Flow family in recent years. After achie­ving CE and FDA appr­oval and soon hopefully CFDA appr­oval, the time has come to consis­t­ently deve­lop the very large market poten­tial world­wide with the funds from the new finan­cing round — both in clinics and in the home­care sector.”

About TNI Medi­cal AG
TNI Medi­cal AG deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and distri­bu­tes devices for respi­ra­tory therapy in pati­ents with respi­ra­tory distress syndrome, such as chro­nic obstruc­tive pulmo­nary dise­ase (COPD). For more than ten years, the Würz­burg-based company has stood for exactly one goal: to consis­t­ently deve­lop nasal high-flow therapy in order to offer respi­ra­tory insuf­fi­ci­ency pati­ents respi­ra­tory support with maxi­mum effi­ci­ency and comfort. Based on inten­sive rese­arch and reali­zed through precise deve­lo­p­ment work in nasal insuf­fla­tion therapy (TNI), the TNI soft­Flow system gene­ra­tion offers the highest therapy quality for all age groups in the clinic as well as in homecare.

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 285 million euros of venture capi­tal in some 265 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 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

Munich — Hofmann & Stir­ner Zuführ­sys­teme GmbH is recei­ving around €1 million to expand its digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies in the field of feeding tech­no­logy. High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and a busi­ness angel are parti­ci­pa­ting as inves­tors. The finan­cing round was broke­red by the BayStartUP inves­tor network. Hofmann & Stir­ner deve­lops feeding systems with the help of digi­tal twins using compu­ter aided design (CAD) and the simu­la­tion of produc­tion plants. They thus master the syste­ma­tic and sorted feeding of a large quan­tity of very small compon­ents into the manu­fac­tu­ring process of indus­trial products. Hofmann & Stirner’s vision is the auto­ma­tic deve­lo­p­ment of any feeding system by means of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. With the seed finan­cing, Hofmann & Stir­ner aims to achieve further mile­sto­nes in tech­no­logy development.

Feeding systems are smal­ler indus­trial systems that feed small parts such as screws, etc. to larger manu­fac­tu­ring machi­nes. They ensure that compon­ents of a product are available at the right assem­bly point at the opti­mum time and in sorted form so that the corre­spon­ding products can be manu­fac­tu­red. They can be found in manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses in indus­tries ranging from auto­mo­tive to elec­tro­nics. Up to now, these feeding systems have been manu­fac­tu­red almost exclu­si­vely in trial-and-error proces­ses by expe­ri­en­ced sheet metal workers with the aid of sample compon­ents. Hofman & Stirner’s tech­no­logy digi­ti­zes this process. To achieve this, the company relies on a holi­stic approach consis­ting of the inno­va­tive ROTU machine archi­tec­ture and its own soft­ware tail­o­red to it. Seve­ral soft­ware modu­les interlock and map all rele­vant physi­cal proces­ses in the feeding system.

Each real ROTU thus emer­ges via its digi­tal image, expan­ding the trai­ning data­base for arti­fi­cial neural network lear­ning to fully auto­mate the deve­lo­p­ment of new ROTUs. The data­base forms the basis for lear­ning arti­fi­cial neural networks and helps to conti­nuously deve­lop the system. The goal is to obtain new ROTU systems for various mate­ri­als to be conveyed in a fully auto­ma­ted manner. “Anyone who only uses off-the-shelf soft­ware will fail in mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring due to digi­tiza­tion,” says Daniel Hofmann, CEO and co-foun­der of Hofmann & Stir­ner Zuführ­sys­teme GmbH. Hofmann & Stirner’s solu­tion designs the feeding system so that users can convert it to convey a comple­tely new mate­rial in less than 2 minutes.

About BayStartUP
BayStartUP is the Bava­rian startup network for foun­ders, inves­tors and compa­nies. With the Bava­rian Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­ti­ons, an exten­sive coaching offer and Germany’s largest inves­tor network, it supports start­ups in opti­mi­zing their stra­tegy, buil­ding their busi­ness and finding start-up or growth capi­tal. For private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, BayStartUP ensu­res a quali­fied deal flow and offers startup insights at exclu­sive busi­ness angel meetings and inves­tor confe­ren­ces. With nati­on­wide startup indus­try matchings and concep­tual offers, BayStartUP advi­ses estab­lished compa­nies on the deve­lo­p­ment of suita­ble stra­te­gies for coope­ra­tion with start­ups. Through BayStartUP, foun­ders have cont­act oppor­tu­ni­ties with more than 280 listed busi­ness angels, over 100 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and finan­cing from €50,000 to €6 million. Each year, BayStartUP’s inves­tor network brokers around €50 million to start­ups, espe­ci­ally in the early stages. So far, more than 1,600 compa­nies have emer­ged from the Bava­rian Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­ti­ons. Today, they are active on the market with appro­xi­m­ately 11,400 employees and gene­rate sales of around 1 billion euros. They have about 400 parti­ci­pant teams each year.

Munich/Jena — mi2-factory GmbH closes a finan­cing round and raises fresh capi­tal in the upper 6‑digit range. The exis­ting lead inves­tor bm|t GmbH (Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment Thürin­gen) and three busi­ness angels from the Munich region are parti­ci­pa­ting as inves­tors. With the unique manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­logy, the so-called energy filter tech­no­logy, of the mi2-factory, power micro­chip produ­cers can manu­fac­ture their chips in an opti­mi­zed way or create new types of chips.

The unique selling point of the mi2-factory is the highly defi­ned proces­sing of the base mate­rial of power micro­chips, which leads to cost and perfor­mance advan­ta­ges for custo­mers and enables comple­tely new types of chips. These chips are made of the highly effi­ci­ent mate­rial sili­con carbide and are manu­fac­tu­red by mi2-factory’s custo­mers to be used in parti­cu­lar in target appli­ca­ti­ons for rege­ne­ra­tive energy appli­ca­ti­ons (e.g. photo­vol­taics, elec­tro­mo­bi­lity, wind power).

mi2-factory plans to invest the capi­tal raised in the further deve­lo­p­ment of product and manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­logy. The current finan­cing round also came about with support from the BayStartUP inves­tor network. “The profes­sio­nal support in the finan­cing process by BayStartUP was outstan­ding. At the Munich BayStartUP Venture Confe­rence in March, mi2-factory convin­ced me of its busi­ness idea,” says Fried­rich Hecker, one of the private inves­tors.

After the mi2 team got in touch with the inves­tors of the 1st finan­cing round at the Inves­tor Days Thurin­gia, this time the startup addi­tio­nally sought inves­tors inter­na­tio­nally — among others also in China. “Ulti­m­ately, the rela­ti­onship of trust that we have deve­lo­ped with our inves­tors, the terms and condi­ti­ons, and the time hori­zon were key factors in our decis­ion,” says Benja­min Tom, busi­ness manage­ment direc­tor and co-foun­der of mi2-factory.

Poten­tial for basic technology
“So far, our biggest chall­enge has been to initiate compre­hen­sive custo­mer projects for forward-looking appli­ca­ti­ons. Our next mile­stone will be the conclu­sion of deve­lo­p­ment coope­ra­ti­ons. In these, we want to estab­lish the energy filter tech­no­logy on the market as a basic manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­logy for the produc­tion of the next gene­ra­tion of power micro­chips,” reports Florian Krip­pen­dorf, tech­ni­cal mana­ging direc­tor and co-foun­der of mi2-factory.

The mate­rial sili­con carbide will gain great importance in the coming years, espe­ci­ally for micro­chips with high voltage clas­ses. “Due to the lower power losses of sili­con carbide compared to conven­tio­nal sili­con, sili­con carbide micro­chips are needed in power lines, trains, elec­tric cars, char­ging stati­ons, photo­vol­taic and wind power plants,” explains Prof. Dr. Michael Rüb, stra­te­gist and co-foun­der of mi2-factory. “In addi­tion to the advan­tage that sili­con carbide chips are charac­te­ri­zed by signi­fi­cantly lower losses than conven­tio­nal sili­con-based chips, they also enable signi­fi­cantly smal­ler modu­les and systems to be built than is possi­ble with sili­con. This redu­ces the volume and weight of power converters.”

About BayStartUP
BayStartUP is the Bava­rian startup network for foun­ders, inves­tors and compa­nies. With the Bava­rian Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­ti­ons, an exten­sive coaching offer and Germany’s largest inves­tor network, it supports start­ups in opti­mi­zing their stra­tegy, buil­ding their busi­ness and finding start-up or growth capi­tal. For private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, BayStartUP ensu­res a quali­fied deal flow and offers startup insights at exclu­sive busi­ness angel meetings and inves­tor confe­ren­ces. With nati­on­wide startup indus­try matchings and concep­tual offers, BayStartUP advi­ses estab­lished compa­nies on the deve­lo­p­ment of suita­ble stra­te­gies for coope­ra­tion with start­ups. Through BayStartUP, foun­ders have cont­act oppor­tu­ni­ties with more than 280 listed busi­ness angels, over 100 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and finan­cing from €50,000 to €6 million. Each year, BayStartUP’s inves­tor network brokers around €50 million to start­ups, espe­ci­ally in the early stages. www.baystartup.de

About mi2-factory GmbH
mi2-factory GmbH is a start-up from Jena (Thurin­gia) in the semi­con­duc­tor sector foun­ded in 2016. Core compe­tence is the deve­lo­p­ment and distri­bu­tion of the so-called energy filter tech­no­logy — a manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­logy for the proces­sing of the micro­chip base mate­rial sili­con carbide. mi2-factory’s proprie­tary energy filter tech­no­logy redu­ces costs, increa­ses perfor­mance and enables design inno­va­tion for high-effi­ci­ency wind power, photo­vol­taics and elec­tric mobi­lity. Custo­mers of mi2-factory are well-known corpo­ra­ti­ons from Europe, Japan and the USA, which produce power semi­con­duc­tor compon­ents in high quan­ti­ties. www.mi2-factory.com

About bm|t GmbH
bm‑t betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment thürin­gen gmbh is the manage­ment company for curr­ently eight invest­ment funds. As a univer­sal invest­ment company for Thurin­gia, bm‑t invests in all high-yield sectors and in every phase of life of compa­nies with a promi­sing busi­ness model, from start-up to prepa­ra­tion for IPO or MBO/MBI. The bm‑t is a finan­cial inves­tor, which focu­ses on entre­pre­neu­rial types and foun­ders and actively supports them. The bm‑t combi­nes invest­ment and active support through busi­ness consul­ting, struc­tu­ring of finan­cing concepts, and parti­ci­pa­tion in commit­tees of the compa­nies. With a strong network, bm‑t supports its busi­ness part­ners as a coach and spar­ring part­ner. www.bm‑t.de

Antwerp (BE) — Brussels-based Camel-IDS, which is deve­lo­ping novel radio­im­mu­no­the­rapy drugs to treat cancer, has closed a €37 million Series A finan­cing round — making it one of the larger rounds among early-stage life scien­ces compa­nies in Europe. Euro­pean private equity firm Gimv is the lead inves­tor toge­ther with V‑Bio Ventures, contri­bu­ting six million euros. Other inves­tors include Health­Cap, Novo Seeds, Ponti­fax and BioMed­Part­ners. With the new capi­tal, Camel-IDS plans to conduct a Phase Ib/II clini­cal trial for its lead deve­lo­p­ment candi­date in breast cancer with brain meta­sta­ses, as well as further expand its pre-clini­cal pipeline.

Camel-IDS (www.camel-ids.com) was foun­ded in 2014 as a spin-off of the Vrije Univer­si­teit Brussel (VUB). The company deve­lops novel radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals based on single domain anti­bo­dies linked to radi­o­nu­cli­des. Pati­ents with breast cancer whose tumors have an eleva­ted presence of the growth-promo­ting HER2 onco­pro­tein can now be trea­ted effec­tively and speci­fi­cally, but their progno­sis is extre­mely poor if the cancer spreads to the brain. The most advan­ced deve­lo­p­ment candi­date of Camel-IDS starts there: It is inten­ded to irra­diate corre­spon­ding brain lesi­ons effec­tively and without harming healthy tissue. This is based on a unique tech­no­logy plat­form that takes advan­tage of the favorable tissue distri­bu­tion of single domain anti­bo­dies asso­cia­ted with radi­o­nu­cli­des, as found in camelids.

Karl Nägler (photo), Part­ner of Gimv’s Health & Care plat­form., explains: “In our discus­sions, the great compe­tence of the Camel-IDS team in the field of radio-immu­no­the­rapy and the excep­tio­nal exper­tise of Profes­sor Tony Lahoutte became appa­rent early on. With CEO Ruth Deve­nyns, the company also has an accom­plished connois­seur of the Euro­pean biotech market and a successful entre­pre­neur. These are the best prere­qui­si­tes for the next stage of development.”

Gimv’s commit­ment is the company’s fourth invest­ment this year in the life scien­ces, medi­cal tech­no­logy and health­care sectors and unders­cores Gimv’s role as one of the most active inves­tors in the Euro­pean health­care indus­try. This brings the number of port­fo­lio compa­nies in Gimv’s Health & Care plat­form to 21.

About Gimv
Gimv is a Euro­pean invest­ment firm with nearly 40 years of expe­ri­ence in private equity and venture capi­tal. The company is listed on Euron­ext Brussels, curr­ently mana­ges around EUR 1.6 billion and curr­ently invests in around 50 port­fo­lio compa­nies, which toge­ther gene­rate reve­nues of more than EUR 2.5 billion and employ more than 14,000 people.

Gimv iden­ti­fies inno­va­tive, leading compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and supports them on their way to market leader­ship. Each of the four invest­ment plat­forms Connec­ted Consu­mer, Health & Care, Smart Indus­tries and Sustainable Cities is mana­ged by a dedi­ca­ted and compe­tent team, each based in Gimv’s home markets — Bene­lux, France and DACH — and supported by an exten­sive inter­na­tio­nal network of experts.
For more infor­ma­tion about Gimv, visit www.gimv.com.

Berlin — The Berlin-based startup Solvemate has raised a seven-figure sum as part of a growth finan­cing. The finan­cing round was led by venture capi­ta­lists Picea Capi­tal and Venture Stars.

Solvemate offers a virtual assistant to auto­mate custo­mer service in compa­nies. In the coming year, Solvemate plans to drive its growth and triple its reve­nue. Speci­fi­cally, the money from the finan­cing round is to be used for further tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ment and to expand marketing.

Solvemate also plans to incre­asingly acquire custo­mers from the Euro­pean region, focu­sing prima­rily on the DACH region. Solvemate is also inves­t­ing the new capi­tal in the algo­rithm and new marke­ting acti­vi­ties. The company, foun­ded in Berlin in 2015, had alre­ady recei­ved funding from Venture Stars in the past. The rene­wed finan­cial support thus demons­tra­tes Venture Stars’ satis­fac­tion with Solvemate’s deve­lo­p­ment. Picea Capi­tal from Hamburg, on the other hand, is a new inves­tor. — Venture capi­ta­lists Picea Capi­tal and Venture Stars are inves­t­ing the sum to acce­le­rate the growth of the startup, which was foun­ded in 2015. The start-up, foun­ded by Erik Pfan­nem­öl­ler (photo), curr­ently has 30 employees. The money is to be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy — but above all for marke­ting, in order to make Solvemate better known in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

About Solvemate GmbH
Solvemate (www.solvemate.com) is a tech­no­logy company that auto­ma­tes corpo­rate custo­mer service with its virtual assistant. Using a combi­na­tion of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine lear­ning, Solvemate’s soft­ware can correctly answer custo­mer queries in an average of 12 seconds and 83 percent of the time. Custo­mers thus receive a targe­ted response quickly, while compa­nies bene­fit from a signi­fi­cant reduc­tion in costs. Users alre­ady include Berli­ner Spar­kasse and the startup SumUp, among others. Solvemate was foun­ded in 2015 by Erik Pfannmöl­ler. The company is based in Berlin and curr­ently employs 30 people.

LUTZ | ABEL repre­sen­ted Solvemate through its two venture capi­tal experts Dr. Marco Eick­mann and Phil­ipp Hoene. Advi­sor Solvemate: Dr. Marco Eick­mann, LL.M. (Part­ner), Phil­ipp Hoene (Asso­ciate)

About LUTZ | ABEL
With around 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

Munich — The company Keller Sports reports a double-digit million invest­ment from a new finan­cing round with main inves­tor Reimann Inves­tors and co-inves­tor group as new inves­tor. It is to be used prima­rily for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the product portfolio.

With a double-digit million invest­ment, Keller Sports aims to acce­le­rate its expan­sion in the market and further shar­pen its premium posi­tio­ning. Accor­ding to the company, the funds will prima­rily be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the new premium life­style plat­form Keller x, the rewards app Keller sMiles, and the further expan­sion of premium membership.

With the growth finan­cing, main inves­tor Reimann Inves­tors expands its commit­ment and is streng­the­ned by the Co-Inves­tor Group as a new inves­tor. Accor­ding to Keller Sports, all exis­ting inves­tors will remain on board. In addi­tion to the equity finan­cing, Commerz­bank and Deut­sche Handels­bank are also incre­asing their debt capi­tal commit­ment by an addi­tio­nal double-digit million amount in order to provide opti­mum finan­cial support for the strong growth of Keller Sports.

“It is by far the largest finan­cing round for us and a mile­stone in the history of Keller Sports,” explains co-foun­der and CEO Jakob Keller. “We are very plea­sed that we have been able to further expand the very good coope­ra­tion with Reimann Inves­tors and to inspire an addi­tio­nal lead inves­tor for our concept with the Co-Inves­tor Group. These two inves­tors have exten­sive expe­ri­ence with fast-growing compa­nies and an excel­lent network. We are thus opti­mally posi­tio­ned for the ambi­tious goals of the coming years.”

“We have been watching the Keller Sports team for some time and are impres­sed by the rare combi­na­tion of medium-sized virtues with a good risk-reward balance and the scala­bi­lity of modern, data-driven online busi­ness models,” says Moritz Ohlen­schla­ger, mana­ging part­ner of the co-inves­tor group, explai­ning the moti­va­tion for the invest­ment. The clear custo­mer focus on deman­ding and enthu­si­a­stic athle­tes, the conti­nuous deve­lo­p­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of inno­va­tive digi­tal concepts, the intel­li­gent dove­tail­ing of the online and offline worlds, and not least the moti­va­ted and expe­ri­en­ced foun­ding and manage­ment team had convin­ced the group. Keller Sports is in the best possi­ble posi­tion to posi­tion itself as a sustainable winner in the sports market.

Accor­ding to CEO Jakob Keller, the invest­ment funds are to be inves­ted speci­fi­cally in expan­ding the premium posi­tio­ning, in the Keller sMiles app, in estab­li­shing the premium life­style desti­na­tion Keller x, and in expan­ding premium membership.

“As a leading premium digi­tal provi­der of sports services and products with premium member­ship as a core element and with very close and trus­ting rela­ti­onships with the world’s most important sports brands, the company has the opti­mal prere­qui­si­tes to successfully estab­lish new digi­tal value-added services such as premium member­ship and Keller sMiles in the market,” explains Dr. Michael Riemen­schnei­der, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Reimann Inves­tors. “In addi­tion, we see great poten­tial in the life­style market, which the company will tap into via the new Keller x brand. We are convin­ced that Keller x has the chance to estab­lish itself as one of the leading e‑commerce provi­ders for sporty progres­sive life­style products, stories and services.”

About the Co-Inves­tor Group
Foun­ded in 2000, the Co-Inves­tor Group consists of a network of entre­pre­neurs who invest their private money directly, i.e. without the inter­me­dia­tion of funds, in medium-sized growth compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. In this process, co-inves­tor share­hol­ders put up their own private money and offer exclu­sive co-invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to a narrow circle of entre­pre­neu­rial inves­tors. — Co-Inves­tor sear­ches, evalua­tes and nego­tia­tes direct invest­ments, supports medium-sized compa­nies in growth phases and secu­res the inte­rests of inves­tors. Toge­ther with the entre­pre­neu­rial inves­tors, the profes­sio­nal invest­ment team and provi­ded exper­tise from a stable network of entre­pre­neurs, Co-Inves­tor is sustain­ably commit­ted to medium-sized businesses.

About Reimann Investors
Reimann Inves­tors is the busi­ness group and family office of members of the Reimann family of entre­pre­neurs who dive­s­ted their inte­rest in the former family busi­ness in the late 1990s. Since our foun­ding in 2006, we have evol­ved from a single family office into a group of compa­nies with Reimann Inves­tors GmbH & Co. KGaA at its core as a family busi­ness and anchor inves­tor, but which is also open to exter­nal inves­tors. We focus our invest­ments on two areas: Capi­tal market invest­ments and corpo­rate investments.

Frank­furt a. M. — Kumo­vis deve­lops 3D prin­ters speci­fi­cally for medi­cal tech­no­logy and enables with its tech­no­logy, for exam­ple, the produc­tion of pati­ent-adapted implants. HTGF is now parti­ci­pa­ting in a seven-figure seed finan­cing toge­ther with a family office and is thus support­ing the company in the market launch of the inno­va­tive printers.

The foun­ders of Kumo­vis GmbH, inclu­ding mana­ging direc­tor Dr.-Ing. Miriam Haerst (photo), have set them­sel­ves the goal of enab­ling the addi­tive produc­tion of plas­tic implants and are deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive 3D prin­ters for this purpose. The prin­ters are speci­ally tail­o­red to medi­cal tech­no­logy requi­re­ments. The focus is on the proces­sing of high-perfor­mance poly­mers, such as PEEK or PPSU, which are alre­ady estab­lished in medi­cal tech­no­logy and appro­ved for the manu­fac­ture of medi­cal devices. — The Munich-based high-tech startup has recei­ved a lot of encou­ra­ge­ment from indus­try and the startup scene in recent months, and has won the Munich Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­tion, for example.

Dr. Cars­ten Rudolph, Mana­ging Direc­tor BayStartUP: “Kumo­vis offers a very good combi­na­tion of digi­ta­liza­tion and medi­cal tech­no­logy. In the three phases in the Munich Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­tion this year, we could observe a strong deve­lo­p­ment of the foun­ders, and the team has syste­ma­ti­cally advan­ced its company.”

Thanks to the comple­ted seed finan­cing round in the seven-figure range with HTGF and a family office, the young company can now prepare its market entry.

About Kumo­vis GmbH
In Octo­ber 2017, Kumo­vis GmbH was foun­ded as a spin-off of the TU Munich. The foun­ders deve­lo­ped the first idea for this in 2016 as part of their acti­vi­ties at the Chair of Medi­cal Tech­no­logy and were able to build and test the first proto­ty­pes with the support of the EXIST Forschungs­trans­fer funding program and funding from ESA BIC Bavaria.

Landshut/Munich — As part of a sche­du­led inter­nal Series A2 finan­cing round, digi­tal distri­bu­tion specia­list Lead­t­ri­bu­tor recei­ves a high six-figure sum. All previous inves­tors parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round. These include Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, the Swiss Base­Tech Ventures AG and the long-stan­ding mana­ging direc­tor of Sage Soft­ware GmbH Peter Dewald.

Munich-based startup lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH, maker of the soft­ware-as-a-service of the same name for indi­rect sales, has achie­ved its growth targets, enab­ling it to take the next step towards expan­sion. lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH has deve­lo­ped a “Soft­ware as a Service” (SaaS) solu­tion of the same name for more effec­tive sales, which is used in parti­cu­lar by medium-sized or large compa­nies. In the past year, the start-up was able to win well-known custo­mers such as Adobe, Amann Girr­bach and Haufe-Lexware.

The soft­ware helps compa­nies turn poten­tial custo­mers into actual buyers. With the lead­t­ri­bu­tor solu­tion, compa­nies distri­bute leads to their sales part­ners at the push of a button and receive regu­lar digi­tal feed­back on the proces­sing status. This enables marke­ting and sales depart­ments to precis­ely calcu­late the so-called return on invest­ment (ROI) of lead gene­ra­tion campaigns and thus deter­mine the added value of a campaign. Infor­ma­tion on leads is constantly updated via inter­faces for custo­mer rela­ti­onship manage­ment (CRM), enab­ling a detailed and holi­stic view of the custo­mer journey.

Roman Huber, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “Since our invest­ment about a year ago, lead­t­ri­bu­tor GmbH has deve­lo­ped excel­lently. The soft­ware takes lead gene­ra­tion for compa­nies to a whole new level — and thus has great market poten­tial. The team around Katha­rina Blum and Phil­ipp von der Brüg­gen is doing a great job and is right on target. Ther­e­fore, it was clear to us that we will parti­ci­pate again in a new round.”

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.

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 285 million euros of equity capi­tal in over 260 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 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de