News-Kategorie: Venture Capital

Munich / Starn­berg — The inde­pen­dent payment service provi­der Delfac­tis AG, Starn­berg, has won BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft as an inves­tor. The company offers a solu­tion for 100% del credere protec­tion and reverse facto­ring in payment tran­sac­tions between supplier and purchaser.

As a payment insti­tu­tion appro­ved by the German Fede­ral Finan­cial Super­vi­sory Autho­rity (BaFin), Delfac­tis guaran­tees the highest level of secu­rity. The contract part­ners include more than 3,000 compa­nies from the food, indus­try and trade sectors.
image003.jpgCentral sett­le­ment with del credere is widely used as a service within purcha­sing groups or group purcha­sing organizations.

Delfac­tis is one of the few service provi­ders inde­pen­dent of asso­cia­ti­ons and indus­tries that offers central sett­le­ment, i.e. the central sett­le­ment of all payment flows between seve­ral suppli­ers and the medium-sized buyer directly. The Delfac­tis custo­mer (the buyer) has the advan­tage that he mana­ges his credit risk hims­elf. By bund­ling the coverage of its purcha­sing volume through just one credit insurer, poten­tial supplier supply cons­traints are elimi­na­ted and the leverage of its credit rating is maxi­mi­zed. Reverse facto­ring gives buyers addi­tio­nal oppor­tu­ni­ties to opti­mize their working capi­tal. Suppli­ers bene­fit from the 100 percent payment guaran­tee, the elimi­na­tion of deli­very limits impo­sed by trade credit insu­r­ers, and the ability to shor­ten their payment terms via reverse factoring.

Marcus Gulder (photo), Head of Venture Capi­tal at BayBG: “The effi­ci­ent proces­sing of payment tran­sac­tions via an actively mana­ged del credere hedge has alre­ady proven itself thou­sands of times. The product and team are well posi­tio­ned and have convin­ced us. We are looking forward to the coope­ra­tion.” Delfac­tis CEO Martin Kötje is also satis­fied: “We are proud to have gained a parti­cu­larly renow­ned inves­tor in BayBG. With this commit­ment and the BaFin appr­oval as a payment insti­tu­tion recei­ved at the end of 2017, we are now ideally posi­tio­ned to acce­le­rate our further growth.”

About Delfac­tis AG
Delfac­tis AG has been active on the market as a central regu­la­tor with default protec­tion (=del credere) since 2010. We alre­ady have long-stan­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships with more than 3,000 well-known compa­nies from the food, indus­try and retail sectors. Risk provi­sio­ning by means of centra­li­zed and bund­led del credere insu­rance for all suppli­ers for one custo­mer is beco­ming incre­asingly important and brings a wide range of bene­fits. Reverse facto­ring for the opti­miza­tion of “working capi­tal” for supplier and buyer comple­tes the product range of Delfac­tis. Delfac­tis can draw on the top three trade credit insu­r­ers world­wide to achieve the best results as a service provi­der for suppli­ers and buyers from an inde­pen­dent position.

About BayBG
With an inves­ted volume of more than 310 million euros, BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH is one of the largest provi­ders of venture capi­tal and equity capi­tal (equity and/or mezza­nine) for medium-sized compa­nies. With its equity invest­ments and venture capi­tal invest­ments, BayBG enables medium-sized compa­nies and start-ups to imple­ment inno­va­tion and growth projects, manage corpo­rate succes­sion or opti­mize their capi­tal structure.

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance has advi­sed Welling­ton Part­ners on its successful fund­rai­sing for its fifth fund, Welling­ton Part­ners Life Science Fund V (WPLS‑V). The fund closed at €210 million, making it Welling­ton Part­ners’ largest life science fund to date.

Welling­ton Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in early and growth stage life science compa­nies. The funds from WPLS V will be spent on a port­fo­lio of appro­xi­m­ately 15 to 20 compa­nies that are active in biotech­no­logy or are deve­lo­ping new thera­pies and medi­cal devices. Selec­ted invest­ments in diagno­stics and digi­tal health are also part of the invest­ment stra­tegy. The geogra­phi­cal focus is on Europe, in parti­cu­lar the German-spea­king region. In addi­tion, isola­ted invest­ments in North America or Asia are also being considered.

WPLS‑V gained many new well-known inves­tors such as KfW Capi­tal, Talanx and the U.S. UTIMCO, the Univer­sity of Texas/Texas A&M Invest­ment Company. Exis­ting inves­tors such as the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank also participated.

The advi­sing Clif­ford Chance team was led by part­ner Sonya Pauls(photo, Corporate/Private Equity, Munich).

About Clif­ford Chance
Clif­ford Chance, one of the world’s leading law firms, is present for its clients with around 3,400 legal advi­sors in all major busi­ness centers around the world. — In Germany, Clif­ford Chance is repre­sen­ted by around 300 lawy­ers, audi­tors, tax advi­sors and soli­ci­tors in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main and Munich.

Tübingen/ Würz­burg — Masimo, a manu­fac­tu­rer of non-inva­sive pati­ent moni­to­ring tech­no­lo­gies based in Irvine, Cali­for­nia, has agreed on a stra­te­gic invest­ment with TNI medi­cal AG, a medi­cal tech­no­logy company based in Würz­burg, Germany. Funds advi­sed by SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment have been lead inves­tors in TNI medi­cal since 2010. Since then, the Tübin­gen-based medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science inves­tor has supported the company’s growth strategy.

Pati­ents with lung dise­ase receive a stream of warm, moist air applied directly to the nose without conden­sa­tion using TNI’s novel soft­Flow tech­no­logy. The flow rate of the air as well as the humi­dity can be precis­ely adjus­ted and oxygen can be added if neces­sary. The system, consis­ting of an inte­gra­ted flow gene­ra­tor, breathing circuit and pati­ent inter­face, opera­tes without pneu­ma­tic systems (i.e. without the use of extern­ally supplied compres­sed air) and can be used both in the hospi­tal and at home.

“The inno­va­tive products TNI has deve­lo­ped provide clini­ci­ans with important addi­tio­nal tools to treat the growing number of people affec­ted by lung dise­ase,” said Joe Kiani, foun­der, chair­man and CEO of Masimo. “We are plea­sed to provide TNI with an invest­ment that will enable the company to conti­nue to commer­cia­lize its products in the large and rapidly growing high-flow nasal therapy market.”

“We are proud of our successful part­ner­ship with TNI medi­cal, its manage­ment and employees. With the stra­te­gic invest­ment of Masimo, TNI medi­cal can bene­fit from a new part­ner with high exper­tise in inno­va­tive non-inva­sive moni­to­ring tech­no­lo­gies. We look forward to TNI’s future deve­lo­p­ment,” says Rein­hilde Spat­scheck, mana­ging part­ner at TNI’s lead inves­tor SHS Gesell­schaft für Beteiligungsmanagement.

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. Curr­ently, SHS is inves­t­ing from its fifth fund. The fund has alre­ady recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of over 130 million euros. www.shs-capital.eu

Munich - air up secu­res 7‑figure invest­ment and successfully enters the market. Sold out in the mean­time and sales that please inves­tors — the successful launch in online and retail of air up ’s “scen­ted drin­king bottle” was prece­ded by a 7‑figure exten­ded seed round prepared by the BayStartUP inves­tor network. Stephan Huber, mana­ging direc­tor of the Munich-based phar­maceu­ti­cal company Denk Pharma, acts as lead inves­tor. The FRe UG of NavVis foun­der Dr. Felix Reins­ha­gen and private inves­tor Carl-Clau­dius Rosen­gar­ten also parti­ci­pate. The inves­tors from the first finan­cing round, Ralf Dümmel, Chris­toph Miller and Frank Thelen, remain on board. The team had met its lead inves­tor at one of the three BayStartUP Venture Confe­ren­ces 2019 — exclu­sive inves­tor panels where selec­ted start­ups present their solu­ti­ons. Last year, parti­ci­pa­ting teams were able to raise a total of more than 30 million euros in capi­tal through the series of events.

With air up’s tech­no­logy, you perceive flavor even though you’re only drin­king water: the drin­king system can flavor water only via scent. This crea­tes flavor without any other addi­ti­ves or calo­ries. “Some ideas are so obvious and yet no one has yet come up with the idea of pack­a­ging taste sensa­tion through retro­na­sal smel­ling into an inno­va­tive product,” says Harald Wagner, head of finan­cing coaching at BayStartUP.

The prelude for talks with lead inves­tor Stephan Huber and for his invest­ment in the company was one of BayStartUP’s Venture Confe­ren­ces in March 2019: “air up convin­ced me with its inno­va­tive product and its strong team. I was parti­cu­larly impres­sed that the team mana­ged to gain access to key play­ers in the beverage indus­try in a very short time. This enab­led it to stra­te­gi­cally place its products with manu­fac­tu­r­ers and retail­ers — an outstan­ding achie­ve­ment!” air up intends to invest the newly acqui­red capi­tal in marke­ting, company deve­lo­p­ment and product deve­lo­p­ment in order to make the brand even better known and to retain custo­mers in the long term. “In the next few months, we want to show that air up is accepted by custo­mers in the market and that our user promise appeals precis­ely to users,” says Fabian Schlang, co-foun­der, food tech­no­lo­gist and nutri­tion expert.

Berlin — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Bryan Cave Leigh­ton Pais­ner (BCLP) has advi­sed North­zone on its follow-on invest­ment in the Series B funding round for Berlin-based games deve­lo­per Klang Games.

As part of the finan­cing round, Nova­tor Part­ners and LEGO Ventures joined as new inves­tors. In addi­tion to North­zone, other legacy inves­tors Neoteny, first­mi­nute capi­tal, Makers Fund and New Life Ventures also parti­ci­pa­ted, brin­ging Klang Games’ total raised to over USD 22 million. The Berlin-based games start-up was foun­ded in 2013 by CEO Mundi Vondi in Reykja­vik, Iceland, and later moved to the German capi­tal. With the newly raised capi­tal, Klang Games plans to further deve­lop its hit game “Seed”, an MMO game with persis­tent story­li­nes that can be used by thou­sands of play­ers simultaneously.

North­zone is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal fund that helps entre­pre­neurs build compa­nies of the future. With the EUR 350 million NZ VIII Fund, North­zone runs one of the largest venture funds in Europe speci­fi­cally focu­sed on early stage entre­pre­neur­ship. North­zone has offices in London, Stock­holm, New York and Oslo and is among the early inves­tors in compa­nies such as Spotify, iZettle and Trustpilot.

The BCLP team, led by Berlin-based part­ner Dr. Albrecht von Brei­ten­buch, had alre­ady advi­sed North­zone as lead inves­tor in the previous Series A finan­cing round. He regu­larly advi­ses North­zone on their invest­ments in Germany, inclu­ding invest­ments in Outfit­tery, TIER, Freight­Hub and Perso­nio. At the Berlin office, he has built a growing prac­tice in the area of tech­no­logy compa­nies and venture capi­tal inves­tors and leads this prac­tice area of BCLP in Germany.

About Bryan Cave Leigh­ton Paisner
Bryan Cave Leigh­ton Pais­ner is a fully inte­gra­ted global busi­ness law firm with more than 1,400 lawy­ers in 31 offices across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, provi­ding clients with compre­hen­sive legal coun­sel where­ver and when­ever they need it. Known for its service and team-orien­ted culture and indus­try-speci­fic inno­va­tions, the firm offers clients one of the most active M&A, real estate, finan­cial services, liti­ga­tion and corpo­rate risk prac­ti­ces in the world.

Biele­feld — Buying dental equip­ment as easy as buying shoes! With its inde­pen­dent online plat­form, the Biele­feld-based startup Zahn­arzt-Helden not only brings sales to the Inter­net, but also funda­men­tally chan­ges the way large-scale dental equip­ment is acqui­red, used and tech­ni­cally serviced. The High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces this inno­va­tion toge­ther with the Tech­no­logy Fund OWL mana­ged by Enjoy­Ven­ture as well as seve­ral busi­ness angels within the scope of a seed invest­ment in the amount of millions.

Until now, dentists have only been able to purchase dental equip­ment through consul­tants at specia­list dealers — in a time-consum­ing and non-trans­pa­rent process. Thanks to Zahn­arzt-Helden, dentists can now purchase large-scale dental equip­ment such as treat­ment units, X‑ray units and intra­oral scan­ners online and at fair prices via www.zahnarzt-helden.de. With the option of a long-term rental, the startup provi­des an alter­na­tive finan­cing method to the clas­sic purchase or leasing, which has long been common in other indus­tries. And not only for dental equip­ment, but also for tech­ni­cal service, which can be taken advan­tage of via a monthly subscription.

Among other things, Zahn­arzt-Helden would like to use the seed invest­ment to set up an online plat­form on which, for the first time, all the infor­ma­tion requi­red for a device purchase is bund­led and presen­ted inde­pendently. In addi­tion, the exis­ting service tech­ni­cian network of over 80 part­ners to date is to be further expan­ded and conso­li­da­ted. “Not only are we chan­ging the way we use equip­ment, but we’re also putting an end to nasty finan­cial surpri­ses when it comes to tech­ni­cal service work. Our flat rate for tech­ni­cal support enables dentists to plan costs,” explains Philip Pieper, co-foun­der & CEO of Zahnarzt-Helden.

Maurice Kügler, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF: “Zahn­arzt-Helden has the poten­tial to trans­form the dental equip­ment retail indus­try with its market approach. The company’s market success to date impres­si­vely confirms this.” Stefan Bölte, Invest­ment Mana­ger at Tech­no­lo­gie­fonds OWL, adds: “The trio of foun­ders convin­ced us imme­dia­tely. With the approach of Zahn­arzt-Helden, an indus­try will be sustain­ably chan­ged and dentists will bene­fit from the new market transparency.”

The foun­da­tion for foun­ding the company was laid two years ago through the Foun­ders Academy and the acce­le­ra­tor program of the Foun­ders Foun­da­tion, Ostwestfalen’s startup cadre. To date, more than 3,000 dentists have alre­ady taken advan­tage of the Zahn­arzt-Helden offer, show­ing the team led by foun­der trio Cars­ten Janetzky, Philip Pieper and Martin Wert­gen that they are on the right track with their restruc­tu­ring of the dental market.

About the dentist heroes GmbH
Zahn­arzt-Helden GmbH, based in Biele­feld, was foun­ded in Decem­ber 2017 by Cars­ten Janetzky, Philip Pieper and Martin Wert­gen and curr­ently employs 20 people. The company’s goal is to make the dental market fairer and more trans­pa­rent for dentists. An inde­pen­dent online plat­form enables dentists to quickly and easily purchase costly large-scale equip­ment for their prac­tice. In this context, Zahn­arzt-Helden is not only respon­si­ble for compre­hen­sive product advice and the purchase of dental equip­ment, but also offers perma­nent tech­ni­cal service at a monthly rate.

About HTGF
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of EUR 895.5 million distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 540 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than EUR 2 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

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

About the Tech­no­logy Fund OWL
The Tech­no­logy Fund OWL focu­ses in parti­cu­lar on start­ups from the IT or IoT sectors as well as on inno­va­tive busi­ness models with high market and scaling poten­tial. The fund mana­ged by Enjoy­Ven­ture has been on the market since 2017 as an early-stage inves­tor with 5 invest­ments to date. Initia­ted by the share­hol­ders Spar­kasse Pader­born-Detmold, NRW Bank, Phoe­nix Cont­act and Unity AG and supported by the fund manage­ment Enjoy­Ven­ture, the leading-edge clus­ter it’s OWL and the Tech­no­logy Trans­fer and Start-up Center of the Univer­sity of Pader­born (TecUP), the Tech­no­logy Fund OWL can invest up to 1.5 million euros in an investment.

Munich — Welling­ton Part­ners closed its fifth “Life Science Fund V” with 210 million euros at the end of July. Twice the size of its prede­ces­sor fund, making it the largest Liefe Science fund ever raised by the company. The invest­ment stra­tegy remains in place: Poten­tial port­fo­lio compa­nies are start-ups from the biotech and medtech sectors.

The first closing of Life Science Fund IV took place at the end of 2012 in the amount of 70 million euros. In a diffi­cult fund­rai­sing envi­ron­ment, the final closing in 2013 then reached 85 million euros. — Rainer Stroh­men­ger, Mana­ging Part­ner at Welling­ton Part­ners, and his team targe­ted drug-deve­lo­ping biotech­no­logy compa­nies with Life Science Fund IV only in excep­tio­nal cases. The focus was prima­rily on medi­cal tech­no­logy and diagno­stics companies.

Whereas at that time around EUR 7 million to EUR 10 million were earmarked for invest­ment in a company, the spread for the succes­sor may be wider: EUR 2 million to EUR 20 million was issued as a target corri­dor at the end of July. In total, the port­fo­lio is to be expan­ded by 15 to 20 compa­nies. Geogra­phi­cally, the focus is as before on German-spea­king Europe. Howe­ver, invest­ments in compa­nies from other regi­ons of the world are not excluded. The focus will again be some­what broa­dened: New biotech plat­form tech­no­lo­gies, new thera­peu­tics and diagno­stics, e‑health busi­ness models and medi­cal tech­no­logy ideas are all being considered.

For the current fund, Stroh­men­ger and Mana­ging Part­ner Regina Hodits (photo ) attrac­ted new inves­tors such as KfW Kapi­tal, Talanx and UTIMCO, the A & M invest­ment company of the Univer­sity of Texas (USA). Many inves­tors who had parti­ci­pa­ted in the old funds also moved back in — inclu­ding a number of family offices, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank.

“We see clear oppor­tu­ni­ties for above-average returns through invest­ments in pionee­ring Euro­pean life scien­ces compa­nies. Given the world-leading inno­va­tion ecosys­tem in Europe, espe­ci­ally in the German-spea­king region, coupled with a lack of quali­fied finan­cial inves­tors in the Euro­pean life scien­ces sector, we have alre­ady iden­ti­fied promi­sing invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties,” Hodits said.

“German insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors such as insu­rance compa­nies are also incre­asingly inves­t­ing in venture capi­tal funds, and in the life scien­ces and health­care sectors as well, as eviden­ced by Talanx’s invest­ment in our new fund, for exam­ple. In Europe, and espe­ci­ally in Germany, there are a large number of attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in the life scien­ces sector for which there is still not enough capi­tal. Ther­e­fore, exis­ting German funds can invest signi­fi­cantly more money in the local market than is available today, and there is defi­ni­tely poten­tial for new funds in some areas such as digi­tal health.”

Welling­ton Part­ners’ successful exits include invest­ments in Acte­l­ion (sale to John­son & John­son), Rigon­tec (sale to MSD), Syme­tis (sale to Boston Scien­ti­fic) and Defi­ni­ens, an infor­ma­tics specia­list for tissue sample analy­sis. Among the most recent invest­ments are Iomx Thera­peu­tics in Martins­ried (see |transkript.de), Sphin­go­tec (see |transkript.de) and Adre­no­med (see |transkript.de) in Hennigs­dorf as well as Snipr Biome in Copen­ha­gen (see Euro­pean Biotechnology).

Berlin — PropTech startup Seniovo is now raising a further €2 million in Series A growth capi­tal follo­wing its seed round in Octo­ber 2018. PropTech1 Ventures and IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft are lead inves­tors. Seniovo accom­pa­nies persons in need of care along the entire process of age-appro­priate and barrier-free conver­sion measu­res of their apart­ments or houses.

Due to the posi­tive momen­tum — for exam­ple, Seniovo achie­ved sales growth of over 250% (Q1 2018 to Q1 2019) — all exis­ting lead inves­tors of the seed round, i.e. the venture capi­tal fund PropTech1 Ventures, which specia­li­zes in inno­va­tions in the real estate indus­try, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft and the German Media Pool with its print media part­ners, are parti­ci­pa­ting again. New inves­tors in the round include other real estate entre­pre­neurs with rele­vant care expertise.

The issue of demo­gra­phic change in society and the corre­spon­ding increase in the need for care is one of the key social chal­lenges of our time. Today, 18 million inha­bi­tants of Germany are alre­ady 65 years and older. 3 million people in this coun­try are in need of care. By 2060, seni­ors will make up one-third of Germany’s popu­la­tion. Seniovo’s goal is to enable a steadily incre­asing propor­tion of people in need of care to remain in their own homes.

As a one-stop cont­act, the Berlin PropTech startup offers target-group-speci­fic advice on its online plat­form www.seniovo.de and digi­ti­zes the entire appli­ca­tion and imple­men­ta­tion process, inclu­ding the imple­men­ta­tion of the measu­res on site with its own craft­smen or the media­tion of certi­fied part­ners. In many cases, persons in need of care do not have to make any addi­tio­nal payment of private funds in this regard. For exam­ple, Seniovo’s success rate in submit­ting grant appli­ca­ti­ons for those in need of long-term care is 95%. Seniovo has alre­ady been able to help more than 500 people successfully rebuild their homes.

Anja Rath (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner of PropTech1 Ventures, comm­ents on the rene­wed invest­ment decis­ion: “Seniovo is one of the very few start­ups that promi­ses both an econo­mic and a social return. We are plea­sed to once again contri­bute to its further deve­lo­p­ment with a strong syndi­cate of co-investors.”

Jona­than Kohl, CEO & Foun­der of Seniovo, adds: “With the freshly raised growth capi­tal, we want to open up further regi­ons as well as launch new products. Most importantly, further digi­tiza­tion of proces­ses and expan­sion of our B2B busi­ness will also further increase both growth and efficiency.”

About PropTech1
A group of entre­pre­neurs led by real estate expert Marius Marschall and the COOPERATIVA Venture Group has taken on the task of acting as a sector-speci­fic VC to provide the most promi­sing Euro­pean PropTech start­ups with capi­tal, even in their early stages, and to foster stra­te­gic part­ner­ships and syner­gies through a tightly knit network into the tradi­tio­nal real estate industry.

Munich / Berlin — Growth capi­tal provi­der Early­bird has parti­ci­pa­ted in the Series D finan­cing round of Berlin-based FinTech company N26 GmbH with a total volume of USD 470 million. P+P Pöllath + Part­ners advi­sed Early­bird on the estab­lish­ment and fund­rai­sing of a special fund to parti­ci­pate in this finan­cing round.

Early­bird is a venture capi­ta­list with an invest­ment focus on Euro­pean tech­no­logy compa­nies. With a volume of more than EUR 1 billion in capi­tal commit­ments across all fund gene­ra­ti­ons and 21 years of venture capi­tal expe­ri­ence, Early­bird is one of the most successful and expe­ri­en­ced VC inves­tors in Europe. Early­bird has been actively support­ing N26 as an inves­tor since the seed finan­cing round in 2014.

N26 is a direct bank specia­li­zing in smart­phone account manage­ment. The FinTech Unicorn is curr­ently conside­red the most valuable German FinTech company.

P+P Pöllath + Part­ners provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to the fund mana­ger, Early­bird VC Manage­ment GmbH & Co. KG, with the follo­wing cross-loca­tion private funds team:

Dr. Andreas Rodin (Part­ner, Private Funds/Tax Law, Frank­furt am Main)
Jan Phil­ipp Neidel, LL.M. (UCONN) (Asso­ciate, Private Funds/Tax Law/Venture Capi­tal, Berlin); Simon Schachin­ger (Asso­ciate, Private Funds/Tax Law/Venture Capi­tal, Berlin)

Berlin — Foun­ded only in May 2019, the Berlin-based capi­tal provi­der Visio­na­ries Club is now close to closing two micro funds of 40 million euros each. Behind them are Amore­lie foun­der Sebas­tian Pollok (photo: La Fami­glia, left) and La Fami­glia foun­der Robert Lacher. Almost all the big names on the German startup scene have paid into their funds, inclu­ding Hakan Koç of Auto1, Flix­bus CEOs Jochen Engert and Daniel Krauss, Gety­our­guide foun­der Johan­nes Reck, Florian Gschwandt­ner of Runta­stic and Hello Fresh CEO Domi­nik Rich­ter. Accor­ding to indus­try insi­ders, well-known fami­lies such as Swarov­ski, Miele, Siemens, Henkel and Bitbur­ger also gave money to the funds.

The funds are to be finally closed in the next few months. The first 40 million euros are to go in tickets of about 700,000 euros to 25 start­ups in the seed stage — i.e. compa­nies that are still at the very begin­ning. The second 40 million will be divi­ded among ten to twelve compa­nies in the growth phase.

The focus is on start­ups that deve­lop tech­no­lo­gies in the trade and indus­try sector. They are looking for “tech­no­lo­gies that kill inef­fi­ci­en­cies in the B2B value chain,” says co-foun­der Pollok. www.visionariesclub.vc

Berlin — Accel has parti­ci­pa­ted in the Series C finan­cing round of Berlin-based logi­stics start-up senn­der toge­ther with other co-inves­tors. Accel had alre­ady inves­ted in digi­tal freight forwar­ding for the first time in the spring as part of its Series B finan­cing round.

The startup curr­ently has around 150 employees and is active not only in Germany but also in Italy, Spain and the Bene­lux count­ries. In recent months, Senn­der has grown signi­fi­cantly and this is expec­ted to conti­nue. In Septem­ber, new bran­ches will be opened: in Madrid and Wroclaw, and in Milan. In Italy, Senn­der has laun­ched a coope­ra­tion with Poste Italiane. Inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion will be just as much a focus in the coming months as the further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy. Senn­der should then gene­rate one billion euros in sales in four years, explai­ned co-foun­der David Nothacker.

Foun­ders David Noth­acker, Julius Köhler, Nico­laus Sche­fe­n­acker (photo from right) have raised $100 million this year alone. Alre­ady in April, the well-known US VC Accel had provi­ded $30 million. Led by Swiss-German VC Lake­star, another $70 million is now flowing into Sennder’s coffers. Siemens startup Next47 is a new entrant in the round, as is Italian family office H14. Exis­ting inves­tors HV Holtz­brinck Ventures, Project A and Scania Growth Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

Advi­sor Accel: Henge­ler Mueller
Henge­ler Muel­ler advi­sed Accel on the tran­sac­tion. Part­ner Dr. Jens Wenzel and asso­cia­tes Clemens Höhn and Alex­an­der Orlow­ski (all M&A/Venture Capi­tal, Berlin) were active.

Helsinki/ Munich — Finnish start-up IQM raises EUR 11.45 million seed capi­tal in a seed finan­cing round. MIG Fonds parti­ci­pa­tes as lead inves­tor with a share of EUR four million. LUTZ | ABEL is advi­sing its long-stan­ding client MIG in the finan­cing round toge­ther with colle­agues from Finland.

The invest­ment in IQM now adds the fifth start-up to MIG Fonds’ invest­ment port­fo­lio since May 2018. With IQM, the decis­ion fell on a “deep-tech” company from Finland, a spin-off of the renow­ned Helsinki Aalto Univer­sity and the VTT Tech­ni­cal Rese­arch Center of Finland in Helsinki: The start-up IQM is working on the deve­lo­p­ment of hard­ware compon­ents for quan­tum computers.

In prac­ti­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, these quan­tum compu­ters are to be used in the future in medi­cal drug rese­arch, in finan­cial markets, or in mate­ri­als and trans­por­ta­tion scien­ces. The high-perfor­mance compu­ters are expec­ted to solve extre­mely complex compu­ting tasks within hours, a task that previously took seve­ral years to complete. With their invest­ment, the parti­ci­pa­ting MIG funds acquire a total share of around 17% in the Finnish company. Inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors should open up access to networks in the tech­no­logy scene and the asso­cia­ted know-how for the start-up. In addi­tion to the Munich-based MIG Fonds as lead inves­tor, Matadero QED, the VC compa­nies Maki.vc and Open­O­cean, the Finnish state-owned indus­trial inves­tor Tesi, the venture capi­ta­list Vito Ventures and other inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round as capi­tal providers.

Berlin — Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft from its VC fund Krea­tiv­wirt­schaft, ECONA AG and other busi­ness angels toge­ther invest more than 2 million euros in a Series A round in the Berlin fintech startup remind me GmbH. The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) is also inves­t­ing again in this round. The company offers a remin­der and opti­miza­tion service for contracts & insu­ran­ces of all kinds. The fresh capi­tal is to be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form and the expan­sion of cooperations.

The Berlin-based fintech startup remind.me offers its users a conve­ni­ent remin­der and opti­miza­tion service for contracts & insu­rance poli­cies. It does­n’t matter whether it’s an elec­tri­city, gas or mobile phone contract or a car insu­rance policy. Under the motto “Forget your notice peri­ods. We’ll take care of it”, remind.me reminds custo­mers in good time before the expiry of the notice period and at the same time gives indi­vi­dual opti­miza­tion recom­men­da­ti­ons for tariff or provi­der chan­ges for ongo­ing long-term debt rela­ti­onships or, in the case of elec­tri­city and gas, even takes care of the change annu­ally, free of charge and fully auto­ma­ti­cally, with which the custo­mer thus saves permanently.

The idea came from the two foun­ders Daniel Engel­barts and Chris­tian Lang, who had previously successfully foun­ded Sparwelt.de, a savings portal cente­red around savings offers & coupons, and sold it to RTL at the end of 2014. With remind.me, they are finally brin­ging order to the chaos of contracts and, above all, helping to opti­mize costs.

Daniel Engel­barts, co-foun­der of remind me GmbH: “We are happy to have found more top inves­tors in this round, who not only believe in us but with their diffe­rent cont­acts & their respec­tive reach help us to become even more successful and grow even faster.”

Timo Fleig (photo), Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures: “The foun­ding team convin­ced us imme­dia­tely. Their mission is to save private house­holds money through the services of remind.me. We would like to actively support them in this.”

Clemens Kabel, Invest­ment Direc­tor at IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft: “The two foun­ders Chris­tian and Daniel have built a strong team around them. In our view, remind.me is excel­lently posi­tio­ned to grow quickly and sustain­ably and to provide many people with an easy way to save money. This is also reflec­ted in the strong and lucra­tive partnerships.”

The startup has been opera­tio­nal since 2017, had recei­ved seed funding from High-Tech Grün­der­fonds in May 2018, and is now gene­ra­ting six-figure reve­nues each month. With the funds from the Series A round, remind.me will expand its team and further deve­lop its tech­no­lo­gi­cal platform.

Simon Math, respon­si­ble invest­ment mana­ger of HTGF: “We are plea­sed that with our invest­ment and support the team has mana­ged to reach the next level and look forward to working with the new part­ners on board.”

About remind me GmbH
remind.me was foun­ded in 2017 by Daniel Engel­barts and Chris­tian Lang in Berlin. The B2C plat­form offers users the oppor­tu­nity to be remin­ded of contracts of all kinds in good time and to opti­mize them. The remind.me team curr­ently consists of 25 people and has alre­ady concluded successful coope­ra­ti­ons (e.g. with Burda, RTL, Viess­mann & Fidor­bank). www.remind.me

About Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures
With Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH, foun­ded in Septem­ber 2015, Berli­ner Volks­bank eG — one of the largest regio­nal coope­ra­tive banks in Germany — invests in inno­va­tive tech­no­logy start­ups in the finan­cial services, real estate indus­try and SME soft­ware sectors. In this way, Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures posi­ti­ons itself as a finan­cial inves­tor in future-rele­vant fields and promo­tes its port­fo­lio through its many years of indus­try expe­ri­ence and its strong network. www.volksbank-ventures.berlin

About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft(www.ibb-bet.de) provi­des venture capi­tal to inno­va­tive Berlin-based compa­nies and has estab­lished itself as the market leader in early stage finan­cing in Berlin. The funds are prima­rily used for the deve­lo­p­ment and market launch of inno­va­tive products or services and for busi­ness concepts in the crea­tive indus­tries. Since March 2015, two funds mana­ged by IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft are in the invest­ment phase, the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 60 million and the VC Fonds Krea­tiv­wirt­schaft Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 40 million. Both VC funds are finan­ced by funds from Inves­ti­ti­ons­bank Berlin (IBB) and the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF), mana­ged by the State of Berlin.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of EUR 895.5 million distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 540 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than EUR 2 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 100 compa­nies. Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and 32 commer­cial enterprises.

Frank­furt am Main — DLA Piper advi­sed FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co. KG on an invest­ment in a finan­cing round in Uplandme, Inc. advise Uplandme, a Sili­con Valley-based gaming studio, will use the funding provi­ded in the finan­cing round to deve­lop and launch Upland, a digi­tal property trading game that blurs the lines between the real and virtual worlds.

Foun­ded in 2018, Uplandme, Inc. uses EOSIO block­chain tech­no­logy to create gaming expe­ri­en­ces at the inter­sec­tion of the real and virtual worlds. Upland allows play­ers to buy, sell and trade real estate loca­ted on real addres­ses. A game currency called UPX forms the econo­mic basis of Upland. Play­ers will be able to complete their real estate port­fo­lio, use loca­tion-based features and trade their proper­ties in a virtual marketplace.

FinLab EOS VC Europe I GmbH & Co KG is a venture capi­tal 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 $100 million fund was laun­ched by FinLab AG, one of the first and largest company buil­ders and inves­tors focu­sed on the finan­cial services tech­no­lo­gies sector in Europe, toge­ther with Block.one.

Advi­sors to FinLab AG: DLA Piper
The DLA Piper team led by part­ner Simon Vogel also included senior asso­ciate Michael Rebholz (both Corporate/Private Equity, Munich). Part­ner Mark F. Radcliffe and asso­cia­tes Kyle de Neve and Syeda Nawroj (all Corporate/M&A, Sili­con Valley) were also invol­ved in the advisory.

Karls­ruhe, Germany — Quan­ti­tec, deve­lo­per of a real-time IoT sensor plat­form for end-to-end loca­tion of goods and inter­nal trans­por­ta­tion with centi­me­ter accu­racy, recei­ves €3.9 million in growth capi­tal. The finan­cing round is led and struc­tu­red by LEA Part­ners, other inves­tors are Vito Ventures with rene­wed parti­ci­pa­tion of Tengel­mann Ventures and some busi­ness angels. With the support of the new inves­tors, Quan­ti­tec intends to extend the market lead of its real-time end-to-end loca­liza­tion system (RTLS) in the field of produc­tion and logi­stics through person­nel rein­force­ment and further tech­ni­cal development.

Quan­ti­tec, based in Hofheim am Taunus, Germany, deve­lops leading hard­ware and soft­ware products for real-time object loca­tion in produc­tion and logi­stics. The inter­ac­tion of proprie­tary sensor systems and the powerful indus­trial IoT plat­form Intra­Nav results in a holi­stic system for compa­nies to locate objects in produc­tion and logi­stics envi­ron­ments inside and outside with centi­me­ter precis­ion in real time. By fusing a wide variety of sensor data and inte­gra­ting univer­sal data sources such as UWB, 5G, beacons, GPS or exis­ting ERP, EMS and WMS systems, the Intra­Nav plat­form offers solu­ti­ons to a wide range of problems.

The RTLS plat­form from Quan­ti­tec crea­tes the data basis for intel­li­gent indus­try and increa­ses process trans­pa­rency in produc­tion. With real-time data, compa­nies can make their proces­ses more effi­ci­ent and flexible.

For exam­ple, end-to-end data coll­ec­tion in chai­ned logi­stics proces­ses allows compa­nies to track goods across the supply chain, enab­ling them to iden­tify inef­fi­ci­en­cies and address them auto­ma­ti­cally. In addi­tion to a variety of use cases, even mixed fleets of auto­ma­ted guided vehic­les and clas­sic fork­lifts, for exam­ple, can now navi­gate to dyna­mic desti­na­ti­ons and auto­ma­ti­cally detect when people or other so-called “assets in motion” are in the vici­nity and react accor­din­gly. In addi­tion, Quan­ti­tec mana­ges to map indi­vi­dual use cases via the modu­lar expan­sion of its system and to deve­lop them toge­ther with the customer.

“Real-time busi­ness intel­li­gence and loca­tion intel­li­gence are key factors for the indus­try of the future,” empha­si­zes Bern­hard Janke (photo), Prin­ci­pal at LEA Part­ners. “With the Intra­Nav plat­form, Quan­ti­tec offers the highest inter­ope­ra­bi­lity with very low latency. Quan­ti­tec thus provi­des the back­bone for tomorrow’s production.”

Herbert Mange­sius of Vito Ventures comm­ents: “Quantitec’s tech­no­logy is proving to be far more perfor­mant and robust in an indus­trial envi­ron­ment than the compe­ti­tion. This has also been shown by a bench­mark from Micro­soft Rese­arch. With the asso­cia­ted soft­ware and intel­li­gent midd­le­ware for auto­no­mous vehic­les, custo­mers receive a holi­stic end-to-end solution.”

“We are curr­ently still focu­sing on the German-spea­king market, but we plan to roll out our offe­ring beyond that as early as the begin­ning of next year,” says Ersan Günes, co-foun­der and CEO of Quan­ti­tec. “We want to become the market leader in the RTLS-based asset and produc­tion track­ing segment and imple­ment Intra­Nav in every digi­tal factory.”

Quan­ti­tec is plan­ning the next evolu­tio­nary stage of its Intra­Nav tech­no­logy for the middle of this year. The company is expan­ding its tech­no­logy port­fo­lio speci­fi­cally for auto­no­mous vehic­les and auto­ma­tion of the connec­ted factory. The product update brings new compre­hen­sive IoT analy­tics capa­bi­li­ties for auto­ma­ted guided vehic­les (AGVs) and alre­ady imple­ments future tech­no­lo­gies such as 5G.

This year, Quan­ti­tec takes first place for the second time among the “Top 10 Inno­va­tors of VW Logi­stic Inno­va­tion Scou­ting,” a world­wide inno­va­tion compe­ti­tion in which Volks­wa­gen Group Logi­stics, toge­ther with the Insti­tute for Produc­tion Manage­ment (IPM), annu­ally selects the most inno­va­tive suppli­ers in auto­mo­tive logistics.

Hamburg — Hamburg-based fintech Exporo has closed a 43 million euro finan­cing round. New lead inves­tor Partech and exis­ting inves­tors e.ventures, Heart­core and HV Holtz­brinck Ventures are parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round. Exporo is Germany’s leading plat­form for digi­tal real estate invest­ments and enables anyone to invest in indi­vi­dual proper­ties easily, trans­par­ently, and even with small amounts, thus buil­ding a broadly diver­si­fied digi­tal real estate portfolio.

Exporo will invest the addi­tio­nal capi­tal prima­rily in stra­te­gic acti­vi­ties: The clear market leader­ship in digi­tal invest­ment in real estate in Germany is to be expan­ded even further. To this end, the exporo.de plat­form is being further deve­lo­ped and supple­men­ted with new offe­rings such as a port­fo­lio buil­der and a real-time trading plat­form. With a clear focus on neigh­bor­ing Euro­pean count­ries, inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion is also being driven forward. The team, which curr­ently consists of 140 people, is ther­e­fore to be enlar­ged, parti­cu­larly in the areas of real estate, sales and IT.

Since its foun­ding in Novem­ber 2014, Exporo has finan­ced around 200 real estate projects through more than 20,000 custo­mers, raising over 420 million euros in capi­tal. “We want to change the way people invest in real estate. To do this, we are digi­tiz­ing access and connec­ting thou­sands of private inves­tors through our online plat­form, who invest toge­ther in indi­vi­dual, profes­sio­nal proper­ties from 500 euros,” says Simon Brunke, CEO of Exporo AG.

“We give every inves­tor the oppor­tu­nity to parti­ci­pate in real estate projects through Exporo, even with small money. Until now, this busi­ness has been reser­ved for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors,” Brunke conti­nues. In addi­tion to finan­cing vetted, short-term real estate projects with fixed inte­rest rates, inves­tors can invest in indi­vi­dual, profes­sio­nally mana­ged proper­ties like an owner, bene­fiting from ongo­ing rental income and property appreciation.

Bruno Crémel, Gene­ral Part­ner at Partech Growth, comm­ents: “The retail real estate invest­ment market is not only a huge one, but also one of the most inef­fi­ci­ent. Many have tried to revo­lu­tio­nize it from diffe­rent direc­tions, but very few have mana­ged to combine all the key success factors in this space. Björn, Julian and Simon, who we have been follo­wing at Partech for many years, have assem­bled a diverse team with the right mix of skills between tech­no­logy, regu­la­tion and real estate exper­tise, and this is what we believe makes Exporo so unique and successful. We are very proud to contri­bute to this disrup­tion in the real estate indus­try through our part­ner­ship with Exporo and look forward to support­ing the team in the years to come.”

As is custo­mary for invest­ments in finan­cial services insti­tu­ti­ons, the imple­men­ta­tion of the finan­cing round is subject to the appr­oval of the German Fede­ral Finan­cial Super­vi­sory Autho­rity (BaFin) and the German Bundes­bank in accordance with Section 2c of the German Banking Act (KWG).

About Partech
Partech is a globally active invest­ment company with offices in San Fran­cisco, Paris, Berlin and Dakar. Partech provi­des seed, venture and growth stage capi­tal, opera­tio­nal exper­tise and stra­te­gic support to entre­pre­neurs across multi­ple conti­nents. Invest­ments range from €200,000 to €50 million and are targe­ted at a wide range of tech­no­logy compa­nies — B2B as well as B2C — and span areas from soft­ware to digi­tal brands and services to hard­ware and deep tech across all major indus­tries. Compa­nies supported by Partech have comple­ted more than 20 IPOs and over 50 major M&A tran­sac­tions with leading inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies. Partech’s current port­fo­lio: https://partechpartners.com/companies/

About HV Holtz­brinck Ventures
Since 2000, HV Holtz­brinck Ventures has been inves­t­ing in Inter­net and tech­no­logy compa­nies through various gene­ra­ti­ons of funds and is one of the most successful and finan­ci­ally stron­gest early-stage and growth inves­tors in Europe. HV has alre­ady inves­ted in more than 160 compa­nies, inclu­ding Zalando, Deli­very Hero, Flix­Bus and Scalable Capi­tal. The total of all HV funds amounts to €1.05 billion. HV supports start­ups with capi­tal between €500,000 and €40 million, making it one of the few venture capi­ta­lists in Europe that can finance start­ups across all growth phases.

About e.ventures
e.ventures (www.eventures.vc) is a global VC fund with an invest­ment focus on early and growth-stage Inter­net and soft­ware compa­nies. Since 1998, the company has inves­ted from its funds in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America. e.ventures’ port­fo­lio includes diverse disrup­t­ors such as Acorns, Depo­sit Solu­ti­ons, Blin­kist, Farfetch, NGINX, Segment and Sonos.

About Heart­core Capital
Heart­core Capi­tal is Europe’s “consu­mer-only” VC. Heartcore’s mission is to build defi­ning B2C brands by focu­sing enti­rely on support­ing foun­ders. Heart­core invests across Europe from its offices in Berlin, Copen­ha­gen and Paris. Heart­core is a proud inves­tor in indus­try leaders like Boozt, Neo4j, Prezi, GetY­our­Guide, Tink, Earnest, Natu­ral Cycles, Peakon, Lilly­doo, Travel­perk and Exporo.

Frank­furt a. M./Vienna — The Euro­pean venture capi­tal company APEX Ventures, based in Vienna and Frank­furt, is laun­ching a new fund, APEX Digi­tal Health. To this end, 50 million euros in capi­tal is to be gained. The focus of the new fund is on young compa­nies deve­lo­ping unique tech­no­lo­gies and appli­ca­ti­ons for the health­care sector.

Digi­tal health, or digi­tal health solu­ti­ons, is a growth market world­wide. The market in Europe alone is expec­ted to grow to around $170 billion by 2025, with an annual growth rate of around 39%, esti­ma­tes market rese­arch firm Graphi­cal Rese­arch. Due to the growing popu­la­tion, incre­asing life expec­tancy as well as incre­asing costs, there is a great need for new and inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in the health­care sector. At the same time, there have been tremen­dous advan­ces in tech­no­logy in recent years, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and image analy­sis. In addi­tion, there are now a large number of young people who can handle these tech­no­lo­gies, as a lot has also happened in educa­tion and trai­ning, for exam­ple in the area of data analy­sis. This crea­ted the basis for setting up a tech­no­logy company at compa­ra­bly low cost.

APEX Ventures has been working inten­si­vely on this topic for some time and has alre­ady successfully inves­ted in seve­ral compa­nies from the digi­tal health sector with its first fund, APEX One: Image­Bio­psy Lab, for exam­ple, which uses AI solu­ti­ons to support doctors in ortho­pe­dic-radio­lo­gi­cal diagno­ses, and context­flow, which faci­li­ta­tes the work of radio­lo­gists with the help of a search engine for 3D CT scan images and Deep Lear­ning. Andreas Rieg­ler, foun­ding part­ner at APEX Ventures, said, “With the tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­ces of the past few years, the incre­asing exper­tise in using these tech­no­lo­gies and the great need for new solu­ti­ons in the health­care sector, now is the ideal time to move even more stron­gly into this area.”

With Dr. Gordon Euller (36), a medi­cal doctor who brings inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence as a specia­list in radio­logy, manage­ment consul­tant at McKin­sey and successful company foun­der, could be won as a part­ner for APEX Digi­tal Health. He opti­mally comple­ments the exis­ting team of APEX Ventures with his exper­tise and will be respon­si­ble for the selec­tion and moni­to­ring of the young compa­nies in which the fund will invest. Gordon Euller, APEX Part­ner Digi­tal Health, said, “New tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ments offer an incre­di­ble amount of oppor­tu­nity to improve people’s health and make the day-to-day work of health­care profes­sio­nals easier. Howe­ver, the further deve­lo­p­ment and promo­tion of these tech­no­lo­gies, espe­ci­ally for the health­care sector, requi­res finan­cial resour­ces as well as entre­pre­neu­rial know-how. I am very exci­ted to be able to make an important contri­bu­tion here with APEX Digi­tal Health.”

The new fund will invest prima­rily in promi­sing Euro­pean start­ups and young compa­nies in the health­care sector. As with APEX One, the focus is on deep tech compa­nies in the DACH region. Howe­ver, invest­ments are also plan­ned outside Europe, e.g. in the USA and Israel. Fund­rai­sing will start soon after appr­oval by the Austrian Finan­cial Market Autho­rity (FMA) under the EuVECA (Euro­pean Venture Capi­tal Fund Regu­la­tion) direc­tive, which includes a Europe-wide appr­oval. In 2020, the fund­rai­sing is expec­ted to be comple­ted. Private, semi-profes­sio­nal inves­tors usually invest between 500,000 and 1 million euros and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from 5 million euros.

About APEX Ventures
APEX Ventures is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal company focu­sed on tech­no­logy start-ups, based in Vienna and Frank­furt, which sees itself not only as a provi­der of capi­tal, but also as a “company buil­der”. The APEX Ventures team consists of the three foun­ding part­ners Andreas Rieg­ler, Chris­toph Kanne­ber­ger and Stefan Haub­ner as well as the members of the Advi­sory Board Hermann Hauser, Peter Hagen and Rudolf Kinsky. Support is provi­ded for young compa­nies with unique tech­no­lo­gies to deve­lop further and successfully bring their products to market. The first fund, APEX One, has so far successfully inves­ted in Euro­pean tech­no­logy compa­nies, inclu­ding AI, Insur­tech, Smart Data and MedTech. In Germany, APEX Ventures is supported by its stra­te­gic share­hol­der, asset mana­ger QC Part­ners. www.apex.ventures

Berlin — Berlin-based start-up Carl has closed a new finan­cing round of just under EUR 3 million. The round is led by Berlin-based VC Project A. The group of inves­tors also includes family office Bastian Unger (form­erly ATU), Karl-Heinz Flöther, Saarbruecker21 and foun­ders of the start­ups Dubs­mash, Conto­rion and Minodes. Carl has built a plat­form for M&A tran­sac­tions that matches owners of middle-market compa­nies with buyers.

“About 230,000 SMEs want to find a succes­sor in the next two years. 95 percent of child­ren do not want to take over their parents’ busi­ness. Succes­sors are ther­e­fore urgen­tly sought. At Carl, we solve this problem with the help of the digi­tal approach and our broad network. The fresh capi­tal will enable us to meet the ever-incre­asing demand,” said Kurosch D. Habibi, foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor at Carl.

Profes­sio­nal advice and access to a broad network of buyers have so far been available prima­rily to large compa­nies. Carl now offers this range of services to small and medium-sized compa­nies with annual sales of between one and 50 million euros. With a digi­tal plat­form on which over 1,600 active buyers are regis­tered and which offers access to a further 120,000 buyers, as well as a network of 220 M&A advi­sors in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, Carl aims to bring trans­pa­rency and profes­sio­na­lism to the highly frag­men­ted market.

For Project A, this is another enga­ge­ment in a series of B2B invest­ments. “Busi­ness succes­sion is a huge chall­enge and there is little appro­priate infra­struc­ture, espe­ci­ally in the SME sector, to support entre­pre­neurs facing reti­re­ment. Carl Finance addres­ses the under­ser­ved market for M&A advi­sory in the SME segment with smart tech­no­lo­gies, deep exper­tise and a passio­nate team,” said Anton Waitz, Gene­ral Part­ner at Project A.

About Carl
Carl (www.carlfinance.de) is a service provi­der for medium-sized company sales and succes­si­ons. Carl actively supports entre­pre­neurs throug­hout the sales process, ensu­ring a profes­sio­nal sales process. This includes a market-orien­ted company valua­tion, the prepa­ra­tion of dedi­ca­ted sales docu­ments, access to an exten­sive network of thou­sands of pros­pec­tive buyers and support during nego­tia­ti­ons and the company audit. Support­ing tech­no­lo­gies are used along the proces­ses to increase effi­ci­ency. The company also opera­tes www.Nachfolge.de, Germany’s largest specia­list portal for corpo­rate succes­sion. Carl is prima­rily aimed at compa­nies with annual sales of between one and 50 million euros. The company was foun­ded in 2016 by Kurosch Habibi and Pascal Stich­ler and is based in Berlin.

About Project A
Project A is the Opera­tio­nal VC that offers not only capi­tal but also a large network and exclu­sive access to a wide range of services. The Berlin-based inves­tor mana­ges 260 million euros with which it finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups. The core of Project A is the team of 100 expe­ri­en­ced experts who provide opera­tio­nal support to the port­fo­lio compa­nies in areas such as soft­ware engi­nee­ring, marke­ting, design, commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, busi­ness intel­li­gence, sales and recrui­ting. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies such as Cata­wiki, World­Re­mit, uber­all, Home­day, Spry­ker, KRY and Wonder­bly. More infor­ma­tion: www.project‑a.com.

Carl Finance raised nearly EUR 3 million in the finan­cing round led by new inves­tor Project A. Inves­tors also include family office Bastian Unger (form­erly ATU) and some exis­ting share­hol­ders. The fresh capi­tal is to be used to service the steadily incre­asing demand. Olga Balan­dina-Luke of the law firm Vogel Heerma Waitz advi­sed the start-up Carl Finance, a service provi­der for medium-sized company sales and succes­si­ons, on a finan­cing round.

Advi­sors to Carl: Vogel Heerma Waitz
Lead: Olga Balandina-Luke

Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media that has been in opera­tion since May 2014 and can draw on a total of over 50 years of expe­ri­ence of its now five part­ners in connec­tion with growth capi­tal financings.

Aachen/Herzogenrath — S‑UBG AG parti­ci­pa­tes with its funds “Seed Fonds II für die Region Aachen” and “S‑VC” in the seven-digit growth finan­cing for Picavi GmbH. The funding round is led by Belgium-based Noma­In­vest and supple­men­ted by contri­bu­ti­ons from foun­ders, manage­ment and another busi­ness angel.

The aim of the finan­cing round is to acce­le­rate the inter­na­tio­nal growth of the high-tech company, which was foun­ded in 2013. “We have accom­pa­nied the deve­lo­p­ment of Picavi since its incep­tion and look forward to support­ing the inno­va­tive company as an inves­tor and part­ner in the next stage of its growth,” says Harald Heide­mann, CEO of the S‑UBG Group.

Effi­ci­ent picking using assis­ted reality data glasses
Picavi has revo­lu­tio­ni­zed the market for picking systems with Pick-by-Vision, a specia­li­zed, data glas­ses-based soft­ware solu­tion for warehouse proces­ses. The modern tech­no­logy enables visual guidance (assis­ted reality) of warehouse employees during the picking process. The solu­tion is now used by inter­na­tio­nally active compa­nies such as FIEGE, DocMor­ris, Bertels­mann, Heine­mann and Neovia and increa­ses effi­ci­ency in logi­stics proces­ses by up to 20 percent compared to other systems.

As a long-stan­ding Google Glass part­ner, Picavi is a global pioneer in the use of the second gene­ra­tion Glass Enter­prise Edition, newly laun­ched by Google in May 2019. Google’s new data glas­ses enable even more perfor­mance through the latest proces­sor tech­no­logy with Picavi’s soft­ware compon­ents tail­o­red to them. “With Glass Enter­prise 2, we offer our custo­mers state-of-the-art data glas­ses with increased perfor­mance for even more effi­ci­ency in order picking using our pick-by-vision solu­tion,” said Jens Harig, CEO of Picavi.

Finan­cing for inter­na­tio­nal growth
Picavi intends to use the fresh capi­tal to drive its sales growth and further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. The first refe­rence custo­mers in the USA were follo­wed by the foun­da­tion of Picavi Inc. in Chicago, Illi­nois in Febru­ary of this year. Through the estab­lish­ment of the wholly owned subsi­diary, the high-tech company is now plan­ning further market deve­lo­p­ment in the USA. But Picavi is also growing in Europe with many new projects.

About the S‑UBG Group
The S‑UBG Group, Aachen, is the leading part­ner in provi­ding equity capi­tal for estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies (S‑UBG AG) and young, tech­no­logy-orien­ted start-ups (S‑VC GmbH) in the econo­mic regi­ons of Aachen, Krefeld and Mönchen­glad­bach. S‑UBG AG invests in growth sectors; high quality of corpo­rate manage­ment is a key invest­ment criter­ion for the invest­ment company. In 1997, the share­hol­der savings banks estab­lished an early-stage fund under S‑VC GmbH to finance start­ups. In 2007, the Seed Fonds I Aachen was added, expan­ding the range to include equity capi­tal for tech­no­logy-orien­ted start-ups. After it was fully finan­ced, a new fund (Seed Fonds II Aachen) was set up in 2012. The third seed fund gene­ra­tion star­ted at the begin­ning of 2018. The S‑UBG Group curr­ently has invest­ments in over 40 compa­nies in the region and mana­ges appro­xi­m­ately €100 million. Further infor­ma­tion: www.s‑ubg.de

About Seed Fonds II Aachen
Seed Fonds II Aachen was estab­lished in March 2012 as the succes­sor to the fully finan­ced Seed Fonds I 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.

Berlin — One Peak Part­ners and Morgan Stan­ley Expan­sion Capi­tal have raised a round of finan­cing for Quen­tic, one of Europe’s leading Soft­ware as a Service solu­tion provi­ders for Health, Safety, Envi­ron­ment (HSE) and Corpo­rate Social Respon­si­bi­lity (CSR). One Peak Part­ners and Morgan Stan­ley Expan­sion Capi­tal invest a total of EUR 15 million. Quen­tic plans to use the fresh capi­tal to acce­le­rate growth in exis­ting and new markets. One Peak Part­ners and Morgan Stan­ley Expan­sion Capi­tal were advi­sed by Dr. Frank Vogel and Nora Wunder­lich of the law firm Vogel Heerma Waitz.

About Vogel Heerma Waitz
Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media that has been in opera­tion since May 2014 and can draw on a total of over 50 years of expe­ri­ence of its now five part­ners in connec­tion with growth capi­tal financings.

Berlin — Commit­Med GmbH has acqui­red the senior e‑commerce provi­der Prose­nio. The two compa­nies will conti­nue to exist as Commit­Med and will operate under the brand name ProSe­nio-24.

Prose­nio GmbH was foun­ded in 2009 and is based in Augs­burg. Prose­nio offers more than 8,000 products in the area of Elderly Care as well as hearing and vision aids for around 200,000 end custo­mers (target group 65+) on its product stores and supplies medi­cal supply stores, hearing aid acou­sti­ci­ans, opti­ci­ans, phar­macies, senior citi­zen stores etc. throug­hout Europe.

Commit­Med, based in Berlin, was foun­ded in 2011 and is now the market leader in the ship­ping of care aids with its complete care aid service of the “Pfle­ge­Box”. The company has around 3,000 care services as long-term part­ners. Commit­Med has been part of the port­fo­lio of growth finan­cier yabeo since 2014, having alre­ady inves­ted in digi­tal home emer­gency call provi­der Libify and digi­tal care service Cera in the UK.

With the acqui­si­tion, Commit­Med owner yabeo, which has been inves­ted since 2014, crea­tes a profi­ta­ble, tech­no­logy-based medium-sized company with annual sales of more than 16 million euros. ProSe­nio-24 is the leading company in this segment in Germany right away, with curr­ently around 250,000 custo­mers and 3,000 part­ner care services. This joint market access forms the basis for the expo­nen­tial growth of ProSe­nio-24 in the coming years: The goal is 50 million euros in annual sales by 2024, with 500,000 end custo­mers and 5,000 part­ner care services.

ProSe­nio-24 will operate as a plat­form prima­rily in the stra­te­gic segments of senior care and medi­cal supply stores, as well as expan­ding its posi­tio­ning as a product and service part­ner for care services.

Advi­sors to Commit­Med and Yabeo: P+P Pöllath + Partners
Chris­tian Tönies, LL.M. Eur. (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, Venture Capi­tal, Munich/Berlin)
Dr. Philip Mostertz (Senior Asso­ciate, Venture Capi­tal, Munich/Berlin)
Markus Döll­ner (Asso­ciate, Venture Capi­tal, Munich)

Tübingen/Berlin, May 14, 2019 — With its fifth fund, the Tübin­gen-based medi­cal tech­no­logy inves­tor SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH is inves­t­ing a mid-single-digit million amount in Better­guards Tech­no­logy GmbH. The tech­no­logy of the Berlin-Bran­den­burg company is aimed prima­rily at manu­fac­tu­r­ers in the sports equip­ment, ortho­pe­dic tech­no­logy and occu­pa­tio­nal safety sectors. Based on an inno­va­tive combi­na­tion of mate­ri­als, Better­guards has deve­lo­ped a plat­form tech­no­logy that protects human joints, preven­ting liga­ment and tendon inju­ries in parti­cu­lar. In addi­tion to SHS, previous inves­tors BFB Bran­den­burg Kapi­tal, a subsi­diary of Brandenburg’s deve­lo­p­ment bank ILB, and Die Brücken­Köpfe also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round. For SHS, it is the third invest­ment from the fifth fund. The fund will be used to build a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science compa­nies. Final closing of the fund is expec­ted shortly.

Better­guards Tech­no­logy GmbH, foun­ded in 2014 and based in Berlin with a produc­tion faci­lity in Bran­den­burg, deve­lops and produ­ces intel­li­gent compon­ents (so-called adap­tors) that can be inte­gra­ted, for exam­ple, into sports shoes, banda­ges or protec­tive work shoes. Equip­ped with this unique selling point, wearers can be protec­ted from joint inju­ries. Better­guards is alre­ady working with Juzo, a provi­der of sports medi­cal banda­ges and orthotics.

The under­ly­ing, broadly paten­ted tech­no­logy combi­nes free­dom of move­ment and protec­tion: Better­guards’ Adap­tor, which stret­ches during normal move­ments, stif­fens within a very short time only during very fast, criti­cal move­ments — such as when twis­ting an ankle — and thus protects the joint from over­ex­ten­sion; after­wards, imme­dia­tely after the criti­cal force has passed, it returns to its stretcha­ble initial state and allows a natu­ral move­ment pattern.

“We are very plea­sed to have another specia­list in the medi­cal tech­no­logy and health­care market on board with SHS. SHS’ indus­try exper­tise and know-how will further help us to posi­tion our company even better in the health­care market and to fully exploit the growth poten­tial of our plat­form tech­no­logy,” says Vinzenz Bich­ler, foun­der and CEO of Better­guards.

Corne­lius Maas, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at SHS, comm­ents: “What impres­sed us about Better­guards was the combi­na­tion of new-mate­ri­als and engi­nee­ring exper­tise. For ankle protec­tion, the company has alre­ady ente­red into a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with a renow­ned ortho­pe­dic tech­no­logy manu­fac­tu­rer. We are convin­ced that we have iden­ti­fied a high-growth company in Better­guards, which we are happy to support in its further deve­lo­p­ment steps. We are very much looking forward to the cooperation.”

“With Better­guards, our team was able to realize the third tran­sac­tion for our SHS V fund from our strong deal pipe­line. Inves­tors looking for a private equity invest­ment in the high-growth medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science market can still parti­ci­pate in the sector fund for a few more weeks,” says Huber­tus Leon­hardt, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Part­ner at SHS

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. SHS is curr­ently laun­ching its fifth fund. The fund has alre­ady recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of more than EUR 100 million and is still open to inves­tors until June 30, 2019. www.shs-capital.eu

 

Aachen/Mönchengladbach, May 14, 2019 — The 
Seed Fund III Aachen and Mönchengladbach
is taking a stake in the Aachen-based startup Taxy.io GmbH as part of a seven-figure finan­cing round. The young company deve­lops arti­fi­ci­ally intel­li­gent soft­ware solu­ti­ons for digi­ta­liza­tion in tax consul­ting and audi­ting. In addi­tion to the Seed Fonds III, NRW.Bank and seve­ral busi­ness angels are also inves­t­ing in the seed finan­cing. In addi­tion to their mone­tary contri­bu­tion, they are also contri­bu­ting profound indus­try exper­tise, sales networks and entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence. Thanks to an EXIST start-up grant from the Euro­pean Union and the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, as well as its own initial sales, the young company was able to further deve­lop its products and achieve its first sales succes­ses. The seed funding will be used for staff deve­lo­p­ment, further deve­lo­p­ment of the soft­ware and further market launch.

More time for the essentials
Taxy.io GmbH deve­lops and distri­bu­tes B2B soft­ware solu­ti­ons for tax consul­tants, audi­tors and employees in finance depart­ments. “Tax firms still have to invest a lot of time and money in legal lite­ra­ture and rese­arch work,” says Daniel Kirch, CFO and one of the company’s four foun­ders. “Our auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons help find the desi­red answers to tax-rela­ted ques­ti­ons and proac­tively inform the tax advi­sor about new consul­ting occa­si­ons. This gives advi­sors and experts more capa­city to devote to actual custo­mer needs.”

The tech­no­lo­gi­cal focus of the Taxy.io soft­ware is on the auto­ma­tion of consul­ting and rese­arch proces­ses using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). The soft­ware suite can be purcha­sed as a license model or inte­gra­ted into exis­ting soft­ware as an exter­nal solu­tion, for exam­ple via a programming inter­face (API).

Proac­tive infor­ma­tion compa­ri­son with current chan­ges in legislation
The Tax Feed module, which auto­ma­ti­cally iden­ti­fies consul­ting events, is the flag­ship of the Taxy.io product world: Using a simul­ta­neous analy­sis, the program compa­res the current tax law lite­ra­ture with the consultant’s clients and calcu­la­tes which infor­ma­tion is rele­vant for which client. The consul­ting events iden­ti­fied in this way are made available auto­ma­ti­cally and the consul­tant can evaluate them for his respec­tive client without any further rese­arch effort.

“Digi­ta­liza­tion is an abso­lute trend topic and is high on the agenda of every company — inclu­ding tax consul­tants and audi­tors,” says Markus Krücke­meier, mana­ging direc­tor of the manage­ment company of the Seed Fonds Aachen and Mönchen­glad­bach. “Taxy.io is signi­fi­cantly driving the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the indus­try by making basic proces­ses signi­fi­cantly more effi­ci­ent. The model also offers tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity for wide­spread use in the market­place via inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, expan­sion to other areas of law, and a programming inter­face to other soft­ware systems.”

The four foun­ders (photo) Daniel Kirch, Sven Peper, Stef­fen Kirch­hoff and Sven Weber, who alre­ady know each other from their studies at RWTH Aachen Univer­sity, are very well networked in the startup and inves­tor scene and have alre­ady recei­ved seve­ral awards with Taxy.io. Well-foun­ded exper­tise in the fields of tech­no­logy and finance combi­ned with many years of profes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence charac­te­rize the manage­ment of the young company.

Hamburg — Cybus, Hamburg-based provi­der of Indus­trial IoT solu­ti­ons, has raised a seven-figure sum in a recent finan­cing round. The round was led by btov Part­ners’ Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies Fund. Seve­ral private inves­tors and successful entre­pre­neurs from the btov network as well as exis­ting share­hol­ders of Cybus were invol­ved. The capi­tal raised will be inves­ted mainly in expan­ding the sales, marke­ting and IT deve­lo­p­ment teams. Cybus is the second company to receive funding from the new btov Fund. This company specia­li­zes in indus­tri­ally rele­vant hard­ware and soft­ware solu­ti­ons in Europe. — Cybus was advi­sed by LUTZ | ABEL .

The Hamburg-based startup sells a soft­ware-based IIoT gate­way solu­tion for mana­ging the flow of data between produc­tion machi­nes, enter­prise IT systems and exter­nal IoT cloud plat­forms. The “Connect­ware” product makes it possi­ble to effi­ci­ently connect machi­nes and entire facto­ries with one or more exter­nal cloud services. The solu­tion allows granu­lar defi­ni­tion of access rights to machine data and control of data flow. This allows both machine manu­fac­tu­r­ers (OEMs) and machine opera­tors to remain inde­pen­dent of the major IIoT plat­forms, build a future-proof IT/OT data infra­struc­ture, and comply with upco­ming cyber­se­cu­rity stan­dards such as the IEC 62443 stan­dard for indus­trial commu­ni­ca­tion networks. Photo Cybus, foun­ding team: Peter Sorowka (CTO), Marius Schme­ding (CPO) and Pierre Manière (CEO).

Cybus successfully enters the market
Leading indus­trial compa­nies such as SCHUNK or B. Braun manage criti­cal produc­tion data with Cybus Connect­ware. This enables them to map data from hete­ro­ge­neous machi­nery to a central seman­tic data model and bene­fit from highly scalable edge compu­ting capa­bi­li­ties to perform some of the data analy­tics “on premise” and directly in the factory.

Robert Gallen­ber­ger, Part­ner of btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies Fund, explains: “We have been watching the emer­ging IIoT infra­struc­ture market for some time. From our perspec­tive, Cybus’ product offe­ring and vision provi­des the most focu­sed response to the growing stra­te­gic tussle between machine manu­fac­tu­r­ers and opera­tors and the major IIoT plat­forms over access to machine data, control of data flow, and who ulti­m­ately owns the data.”

Consul­tant Cybus: LUTZ | ABEL 
Lead consul­ting attor­ney, Dr. Lorenz Jellinghaus.

Munich — BayWa AG has acqui­red a stake in Tjiko GmbH by way of a cash capi­tal increase. A team led by Dr. Mathias Schrö­der, Part­ner at the Munich office of law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice.

Tjiko GmbH is a young and inno­va­tive company from Rosen­heim, Germany, which is the first supplier of indi­vi­dual bath­room modu­les in timber cons­truc­tion to bring new effi­ci­ency to the cons­truc­tion proces­ses of multi-storey timber construction.

BayWa AG is an inter­na­tio­nally active trading and services group. In the Agri­cul­ture, Energy and Cons­truc­tion busi­ness segments, trading and logi­stics form the over­ar­ching core compe­ten­cies. In addi­tion, the BayWa Group is also invol­ved in the venture capi­tal sector and invests in promi­sing young companies.

Advi­sors to BayWa AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Mathias Schrö­der, LL.M. (lead part­ner), Fabian Becker, LL.M., Peter M. Schäff­ler, Alex­an­der Weber, LL.M., Dr. Markus Rabe, LL.M. (all corpo­rate law/M&A, venture capi­tal), all Munich;
Astrid Well­hö­ner, LL.M. Eur., Stepha­nie Wurm (both Employ­ment Law), both Munich
Domi­nik Eicke­meier, Dr. Lutz M. Keppe­ler (both IP&IT), both Cologne

Basel — ALENTIS Thera­peu­tics (“ALENTIS”), a Swiss-French biotech company is deve­lo­ping new, inno­va­tive drugs for the treat­ment of advan­ced liver dise­a­ses and cancer. In a CHF 12.5 million (€11.1 million; USD 12.5 million) Series A finan­cing, Swiss venture capi­tal firms BioMed­Part­ners and BB Pureos Bioven­tures led the consor­tium, which was joined by BPI France, Schro­der Adveq and the German High Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF).

Dr. Markus L.E.Ewert, MBA has been appoin­ted CEO of the new company. He was previously a board member at Ablynx and contri­bu­ted to one of the largest U.S. biotech IPOs of the year and the very successful sale of Ablynx to Sanofi. Previously, Dr. Ewert led global corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment at GE Health­care, held leader­ship posi­ti­ons at Novar­tis, and successfully built life science compa­nies based on innovation.

ALENTIS’ most advan­ced project is a huma­ni­zed mono­clonal anti­body against a protein that plays a key role in the patho­logy of liver fibro­sis and hepa­to­cel­lu­lar carci­noma. Limi­ted thera­peu­tic opti­ons are available for the treat­ment of advan­ced liver dise­ase and cancer. Alen­tis’ inno­va­tive project aims to address this major clini­cal problem.

ALENTIS rese­arch is based on an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy plat­form that uses a gene expres­sion signa­ture that diffe­ren­tia­tes between good and poor progno­sis in liver dise­ase. This plat­form can be used to find and deve­lop further drug candi­da­tes for the treat­ment of advan­ced liver dise­a­ses and cancer.

ALENTIS is based on ground­brea­king rese­arch conduc­ted by Prof. Dr. Thomas Baumert’s labo­ra­tory at the Univer­sity of Stras­bourg, the Inserm Insti­tute for Viral and Liver Dise­ase, the Labo­ra­tory of Excel­lence HepSYS and the Insti­tut Hospi­tal-Univer­si­taire Stras­bourg, and other colla­bo­ra­tors, inclu­ding Prof. Dr. Yujin Hoshida at the Univer­sity of Texas Southwes­tern in Dallas. SATT Conec­tus, the tech­no­logy trans­fer support orga­niza­tion in Alsace (France), was instru­men­tal in provi­ding, buil­ding and secu­ring the patent port­fo­lio licen­sed to ALENTIS. BaseLaunch, an inno­va­tion acce­le­ra­tor opera­ted by BaselArea.swiss, was instru­men­tal in the early stages of the company’s crea­tion as a finan­cial and opera­tio­nal supporter. Through this tri-natio­nal colla­bo­ra­tion, ALENTIS is now head­quar­te­red in Basel, Switz­er­land with a subsi­diary in Stras­bourg, France and a branch office in Germany.

Thomas F. Baumert, M.D., Profes­sor of Medi­cine, Head of the Inserm Rese­arch Insti­tute and Chair of Hepa­to­logy at the Univer­sity Hospi­tal of Stras­bourg, and prin­ci­pal foun­der of ALENTIS, said, “Toge­ther with my colle­agues, we are exci­ted to bring our new thera­peu­tic approa­ches with their inno­va­tive and promi­sing mecha­nism of action into the clinic. Our goal is to improve the treat­ment of pati­ents with advan­ced liver disease.”

Dr. Andreas Wallnöfer, former Head of Clini­cal Rese­arch & Early Deve­lo­p­ment at F. Hoff­mann-La Roche Ltd. and now Gene­ral Part­ner at the Basel-based venture capi­tal firm BioMed­Part­ners, added: “The precli­ni­cal data set of the ALENTIS lead program is very compre­hen­sive and convin­cing. They demons­trate the thera­peu­tic poten­tial of the new phar­ma­co­lo­gi­cal approach in the treat­ment of advan­ced liver dise­a­ses of diffe­rent patho­ge­ne­sis. Prof. Baumert’s rese­arch is trans­la­tio­nal and links rese­arch and clinic through a progno­stic gene expres­sion signa­ture. This is extre­mely valuable for the opti­mal charac­te­riza­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of the most advan­ced project and for the disco­very of further programs for the treat­ment of liver diseases.”

The Board of Direc­tors of ALENTIS will be compo­sed of Neil Golds­mith, Co-Foun­der and Chair­man; Andreas Wallnöfer, Gene­ral Part­ner at BioMed­Part­ners; Martin Münch­bach, Mana­ging Part­ner at BB Pureos Bioven­tures; Benoit Barteau, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at BPI France, and Prof. Thomas F.Baumert, Prin­ci­pal Founder

About ALENTIS Therapeutics
ALENTIS Thera­peu­tics (ALENTIS) disco­vers and deve­lops inno­va­tive drugs for the treat­ment of advan­ced liver dise­a­ses such as liver fibro­sis, cirrho­sis and liver cancer (hepa­to­cel­lu­lar carci­noma, HCC). — The Swiss-French biotech company, estab­lished as ALENTIS Thera­peu­tics AG in March 2019, is head­quar­te­red in Basel, Switz­er­land, with a subsi­diary in Stras­bourg, France, and a branch office in Germany.

ALENTIS has licen­sed plat­form tech­no­lo­gies and mono­clonal anti­bo­dies that are the result of more than a decade of rese­arch by the Univer­sity of Stras­bourg and Inserm, the French Natio­nal Insti­tute of Health and Mount Sinai Hospi­tal, New York.

Priva­tely held ALENTIS is funded by leading venture inves­tors BioMed­Part­ners, BB Pureos Bioven­tures, BPI France, Schro­der Adveq and the German High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF).

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS advi­sed the inves­tors in the first finan­cing round of the Colo­gne-based ice cream startup NOMOO, a brand of NRDS GmbH. A group of three venture capi­ta­lists ( Quest Solu­ti­ons GmbH, Siltho Rese­arch GmbH and AM1 Ventures GmbH) parti­ci­pa­ted in the invest­ment. Details of the finan­cing round were not disclosed.

NOMOO distri­bu­tes the first flavorful ice cream that is 100% plant-based. After a 600% growth of the brand in 2018, the growth is plan­ned to increase further in 2019. So far, the startup has a strong presence prima­rily in NRW. NRDS GmbH intends to use the fresh capi­tal to make NOMOO known throug­hout Germany. At the same time, NOMOO’s products will be made available nati­on­wide in grocery stores, restau­rants and also through online mail order.

Advi­sor to inves­tors: ARQIS Attor­neys at Law
Dr. Mirjam Boche (lead, M&A/Venture Capi­tal), Malte Grie­pen­burg (Corpo­rate), Dr. Phil­ipp Maier (IP), Saskia Kirsch­baum (Labor Law)

About ARQIS
ARQIS is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting in Germany and Japan. The firm was foun­ded in 2006 at its current offices in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo. Around 45 profes­sio­nals advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on the core issues of German and Japa­nese busi­ness law. The focus is on M&A, corpo­rate law, private equity, venture capi­tal, employ­ment law, private clients, intellec­tual property, liti­ga­tion as well as real estate law and tax law. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.arqis.com.