Media | 22 August 2013 10:00
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Berlin, 22.08.2013
: German Startups Group Berlin AG, a new venture capital provider, has made nine additional investments. Just over a year after launching, German Startups Group therefore possesses a diverse and promising portfolio of 20 different stakes featuring different business models and start-up teams.
A brief overview of German Startups Group’s new portfolio companies: – The stock listed Cybits Holding AG is the leading service provider for online identification of individuals on the German internet. Its product Verify-U is compliant with the demands of the German legislator regarding secure and reliable identifications. Verify-U is a patented and certified identification process, which enables Cybits to identify all end customers of its business partners online, instantly at any time and any place. As a purely IT-based solution, Verify-U is highly scalable. In the course of this year, the final operative breakthrough on the announced mass-markets of De-Mail, financial institutes and as the leading age-verification-system in the gambling segment should be achieved. – MIMOon is a key player in the emerging 4G wireless market. This Duisburg company emerged from a university research laboratory to become a global leader in the development of the highly complex software embedded in LTE terminals and base stations. Companies like Texas Instruments bundle MIMOon’s software with its chips to top tier LTE infrastructure vendors. EETimes has selected MIMOon four years in a row for the Silicon 60 Hot Startups to watch. – SquadMail lets teams safe time and communicate more efficiently. The innovative service works like ‘Dropbox for email’ and allows users to share their email folders with others – independently of whichever email provider and client they use. The shared folders automatically appear in the email clients of users and additionally get their own email address. Even though still in beta development, several thousand companies from all around the world already use SquadMail. On top of that, the young Berlin-based start-up won the main price at Europe’s No.1 start-up conference, NEXT Berlin 2012. – A Space For Art organizes art exhibitions outside the traditional galleries or museums. The owners of high quality venues like boutique hotels or premium restaurants have space, but often shy away from the logistics and costs of real art. A Space For Art solves both problems and offers a Win-Win-Situation: artists, galleries, venues and artlovers all benefit at the same time. – Wummelkiste develops and delivers a monthly arts and crafts box for kids aged 3 to 8. The Wummellkiste team aims to uphold certain standards and criteria when developing its’ boxes including the use of sustainable, high quality materials to foster learning through play. The Wummelkiste enables kids to get creative and spend quality time. – Kirondo offers parents a convenient way to clear out their kids closets without any effort, earn money with their unused clothes and support social causes. Kirondos concept is based on the circuit of sellers, buyers, our logistic and quality control. Only like-new high-quality brands will be sold in the Kirondo online shop at discounts of up to 50%. A part of our processed clothes and revenue will be donated to social causes. – Meine-Spielzeugkiste disrupts the traditional toy industry. The subscription service brings the most popular high-quality toy brands to children. With a convenient monthly membership rate, parents receive up to six toys which they can return anytime in exchange for new ones or decide to keep them at a discounted price. Meine-Spielzeugkiste was awarded second best at the Karlsruhe Venture Day and has won top position both at the Berlin Venture Lounge for a seminal online market place and especially at the San Francisco Startup Show for its business model and pitch. – sporTrade is an one shop stop for sporting goods. Athletes and sport-enthusiasts can choose from a continuously growing assortment of sport products and compare prices from multiple retailers. At the same time users can sell their own used equipment. Offering more than 100.000 products from more than 120 registered retailers for running, biking, triathlon, water- and ball games, sporTrade is one of Germany’s leading online marketplaces. All together Germany’s sports industry has a growing trade volume, which consists of almost 15 billion Euros right now. – 9Cookies is a Berlin based startup that provides the first iPad management system for restaurants and delivery services. With the GastroPad, restaurants can take orders and make payments. By linking directly to the internet, all of the data and transactions can be used to create reports, analysis and marketing arrangements. Through these tools, restaurants can be managed and permanently optimized. 9Cookies launched a new Satellite function in early August 2013 that allows the ability to connect iOSdevices like iPads, iPad minis, iPod touches and iPhones wirelessly with the POS System. This new function will make a waiters work easier and give them the opportunity to directly interact with the customers more efficiently. Just like the GastroPad, the devices are extremely easy and intuitive to handle. German Startups Group welcomes plans by the acting Minister of Economic Affairs, Philipp Rösler (FDP), which have emerged over the last few days, to create a new segment at the stock exchange, similar to the ‘Neuer Markt’, for technology companies after the German general elections. ‘A powerful exit-channel via IPO is currently the main difference between the German start-up scene, also referred to as Silicon Allee, and its archetype, Silicon Valley. A safe opportunity for successful start-up risk investments at the end of their ramp up phase to generate fair exit proceeds would benefit all previous maturity stages and financing rounds and make the funding of start-ups much easier from day one. Startups have always been a significant driving force for each and every market economy, even if companies such as Siemens, SAP, or United Internet weren’t referred to as such at the time of their foundation’, says Christoph Gerlinger, CEO, who has already IPOed two companies himself. ‘It would benefit the entire startup eco system, and thus create a number of highly qualified jobs whilst simultaneously generating tax revenues in the medium term’. Such a new stock exchange segment could also turn out to be interesting for German Startups Group in order to go public and therefore allowing it to offer a piece of the ‘Startups made-in-Germany’ pie to a broader range of investors.
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End of Media Release Issuer: German Startups Group Berlin AG Key word(s): Enterprise 22.08.2013 Dissemination of a Press Release, transmitted by DGAP – a company of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. DGAP’s Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de |
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