Bayern Kapital invests in Goodly Innovations
Augmented Reality in the Pharmaceutical Industry:
Landshut / Munich-Grünwald — Bayern Kapital invests in Goodly Innovations as part of a Series A financing round. Together with BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft and two business angels, Bayern Kapital invests a seven-digit amount. Founded at the end of 2016, the start-up from Munich-Grünwald has developed an augmented reality (AR) system that significantly improves efficiency in production in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as well as enabling considerable cost savings. Goodly Innovations plans to use the Series A round funding to further develop its product and expand commercialization.
Goodly Innovations’ augmented reality system, called OptiworX, is used in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries for production processes that are downstream of active ingredient manufacturing. Here, companies face the challenge that operating equipment — for example, in the packaging of active ingredients — often has to be taken out of service due to maintenance or retrofitting. As a result, production is stopped. Depending on the complexity of a machine, these downtimes amount to up to 50 percent and cause considerable costs. The Goodly solution is based on mature technologies and is already successfully used by several international pharmaceutical companies. Here, it ensures greater efficiency and faster problem solving by visually guiding machine users through the changeover or maintenance process using augmented reality glasses. Any number of people can collaborate on any number of end devices. To date, OptiworX is the only system to offer this multi-user, multi-device collaboration for large industrial manufacturing and packaging facilities. The platform is designed as a modular, vendor-independent system. It enables fast, customized setup and integration into virtually any production environment.
Dr. Georg Ried, Managing Director of Bayern Kapital, says: “Goodly Innovations has developed a product that uses augmented reality to solve a fundamental problem in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The technology works reliably — an important point in a regulated environment. Combined with the experience of the founding team, these are good prerequisites for establishing the system as a standard in a large market.”
Robert Hoffmeister, Co-Founder and CEO of Goodly Innovations, states: “Thanks to the financing round, we can accelerate the further expansion of OptiworX for the biopharma sector, both with additional product features and with greater international presence. We last saw productivity leaps and quality improvements on this scale in the automotive industry 30 years ago. With OptiworX, we are helping employees to unlock up to 50 percent productivity reserves through the use of state-of-the-art and intuitive technology.”
Alexander Ullmann, Investment Manager at BayBG, says: “With OptiworX, Goodly optimizes production processes and minimizes planned and unplanned plant downtime and changeover times. We were particularly convinced by the outstanding unique selling point of the Goodly solution. It is the only AR system that enables multi-member teams to work on a task simultaneously and synchronously in real time.”
About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapital GmbH, based in Landshut, was founded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsidiary of LfA Förderbank Bayern on the initiative of the Bavarian state government. As the venture capital company of the Free State of Bavaria, Bayern Kapital provides equity capital to the founders of innovative high-tech companies and young, innovative technology companies in Bavaria. Bayern Kapital currently manages eleven investment funds with an investment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapital has invested around 300 million euros of venture capital in 270 innovative technology-oriented companies from a wide range of sectors, including life sciences, software & IT, materials & new materials, nanotechnology and environmental technology. As a result, more than 7,500 jobs have been permanently created in Bavaria in sustainable companies. www.bayernkapital.de
About Goodly Innovations GmbH
Goodly Innovations GmbH is a leading provider of augmented reality solutions for industrial applications. The OptiworX product is the only multi-user team management solution that uses AR. OptiworX was designed as a modular, vendor-independent system and allows a fast and individual setup in almost any production environment, as a stand-alone system or integrated, e.g. into existing MES systems for the creation of Electronic Batch Records.
www.goodly-innovations.com
About BayBG
With an invested volume of more than 300 million euros, BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH is one of the largest venture capital and equity capital providers for start-ups and medium-sized companies. With its venture capital and equity investments, BayBG facilitates the implementation of innovation and growth projects, the regulation of corporate succession, restructurings, or the optimization of the capital structure.
www.baybg.de