9. August 2023 Uncategorized by EdaHorn 0 Comments

Welcome sewts

We are very pleased to welcome sewts, a successful robotics company, as the first company in the 'EquityPitcher Growth Fund' portfolio.

The Munich-based deep-tech start-up has completed a Series A financing round of 7 million Euros and brought on board a number of high-profile investors. Participating in the financing round, alongside EquityPitcher Ventures, were internationally leading industrial and technology investors: Emerald Technology Ventures, Constantia New Business, and Nabtesco Technology Venture as new investors, as well as additional contributions from existing shareholders Bayern Kapital, APEX Ventures, and HTGF. With the new financing, sewts will continue the roll-out of the sewts.VELUM systems in international laundries and tap into new markets, such as handling returns in e-commerce.

sewts automates what others cannot. While picking rigid materials like metals is quite simple for robots, handling deformable and soft materials (such as textiles) is still the white spot of automation. With its unique approach of combining AI, robotics, and material simulation, the company founded in 2019 aims to change this. By equipping robots with human-like perception and grasping abilities, sewts has for the first time enabled the automatic handling of textiles.  

What makes sewts interesting?

 

In 2022, sewts launched its first production-ready product, sewts.VELUM – a robotic unit intended for global industrial laundries to overcome the massive labor shortage and increase efficiency. The robot automatically picks up wrinkled towels and feeds them to the folding machines to reduce manual labor at a human-like speed. The market for industrial laundries is often underestimated, but it actually has a global volume of 100 billion Euros in annual sales. 

At the same time, sewts has already begun to invest in the development of additional use cases along the life cycle of textile production, as there is an unprecedented demand for automation solutions. The new technology will not only be needed to overcome the labor shortage but will also help achieve global climate goals and protect human rights. Bringing the production and recycling of textiles closer to the consumer market will greatly reduce CO2 transportation costs, overproduction, and waste. 

"Our long-term vision is a 'Moonshot' idea - we want to revolutionize the production of textiles. To achieve this, we first dedicate ourselves to the most promising niche markets, and then gradually approach the grand vision step by step." 

Alexander Bley, CEO and co-founder of sewts

Read More
27. March 2023 Uncategorized by EdaHorn 0 Comments

Welcome Wingtra

We are very pleased to welcome Wingtra, a successful drone startup, to our portfolio. The world's largest manufacturer of commercial vertical takeoff and landing drones (VTOL) has successfully completed a Series B financing round of $22 million. The financing round was led by DiamondStream Partners, a globally leading venture capital firm investing in aviation companies. Wingtra is in the pole position to accelerate its growth with a new financing round, an expanded management team, and product innovations.


Who is Wingtra?

Wingtra, headquartered in Switzerland, is the world's leading provider of VTOL drone solutions for professionals in the fields of construction, infrastructure, mining, as well as urban planning and land management. Since entering the market in early 2017, Wingtra has partnered with the largest equipment dealers on all continents and has been selling mapping drones worldwide. In the summer of 2021, Wingtra released the second generation of its WingtraOne drone, the WingtraOne GEN II. The system is a leader in terms of reliability, versatility, efficiency, and user-friendliness.

Was macht Wingtra interessant?

The WingtraOne VTOL drone, the company's flagship product, has become an impressive solution for aerial data collection in the market. The VTOL design means that the WingtraOne can take off and land almost anywhere, even in tight spaces or rough terrain, enabling extensive data collection. It is used by hundreds of companies and organizations such as CEMEX, Rio Tinto, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Kenya Red Cross in 96 countries. The drones conduct over 100,000 flights annually, mapping 18 million hectares of land and sea (equivalent to 13.6 million soccer fields).

In 2021, the team successfully launched its second generation of drones, the WingtraOne Gen II drone, which delivers superior 2D and 3D maps in survey-grade quality, enabling users of the data to make better decisions. It integrates the highest quality sensors into cutting-edge RGB cameras to create 3D models and assists in creating digital twins on a scale such that a single flight can digitize over 100 hectares at 0.5 in/px.

 
Where is the journey heading?

Maximilian Boosfeld, CEO and Co-founder of Wingtra, commented: "Our vision at Wingtra is to create a world where drones help people manage large parts of our planet in a more sustainable and efficient way. We have lowered the cost of using drones and increased data quality. This will help the industry plan better and fundamentally improve safety for people and the environment."

Wingtra has now strengthened its leadership team with four new industry experts to grow the company:

"Each of these executives has the right experience to propel Wingtra forward," said Maximilian Boosfeld. "They have all successfully taken multiple companies to the next level. With this funding round, the right employees, and a market-leading product, we are well positioned to accelerate the company's growth."

Maximilian Boosfeld is the CEO and co-founder of Wingtra

Wingtra is working to revolutionize the mapping workflow for surveying and mapping professionals, so they can do their work better and faster. Significant new features, camera integrations, and product launches are expected in the coming years.

We look forward to support the strong team in their further growth.

Read More
3. January 2023 Uncategorized by EdaHorn 0 Comments

Review into the year 2022

Dear EquityPitcher friends, family and partners 

We look back "again", as it must be said, on an almost unimaginable year in terms of events. However, these have already been commented on extensively, so we will focus our annual review entirely on the events that EquityPitcher and our portfolio companies created themselves.

Portfolio Highlights

This year, too, we are pleased to report that the 22 companies with which we started the year were still active at the end of the year. Given the macroeconomic changes, this is anything but a matter of course. We are even more pleased that our portfolio companies continued to grow successfully for the most part.

Our startups were able to achieve 80% "year on year growth on average. 6 of our companies achieved 3-digit growth in 2022! 15 of our companies achieved 7-digit revenues in 2022, 8 of them more than 3 million CHF and 2 even 2-digit million revenues.

 

External circumstances have made us reluctant to make new investments. The plan was that we would invest in 5 to max. 7 new companies in 2022. In fact, with Sinpex, CNC24 and Calingo, only 3 new companies found their way into our portfolio.

This is mainly due to the fact that many startups decided to "only" realize interim financing instead of the planned financing round. On the one hand, this is against the background that valuations in 2022 have undergone a very significant downward correction and, on the other hand, because the willingness to invest in new portfolio companies was generally very restrained.

However, the aforementioned interim financing was very much in demand. Mostly via a "Convertible Loan" the companies, which are developing positively, were able to secure the necessary capital inflows from their existing investors to extend their "runway" to at least 12-18 months. Thus, the startups can continue to grow and thus create the conditions for a successful financing round with the desired valuation. For the existing investors, this has the advantage that they could usually buy in again at a lower price. We as EquityPitcher have also participated in such interim financing for 5 of our portfolio companies.

Furthermore, we have reinvested in vestr and Lumiform, which despite the external circumstances were able to successfully execute their planned financing rounds and raise 10 MCHF and 6.5 MCHF of fresh capital, respectively. Mika also successfully closed its financing round with 10 MCHF of fresh capital.

In this context, we are also very happy and grateful to welcome new friends and partners in our circle of co-investors with Capnamic, Elevator ventures, Coparion, Future Industry ventures, Seedcamp and Venpace.

In total, approximately 40 MCHF of fresh capital flowed into our portfolio companies in 2022. Over the entire lifecycle, 170 MCHF have now been invested in them!

Once again, it would be beyond the scope of this year's review to go into detail about each individual company. However, we would like to remain true to our tradition and pay our respects to the companies and entrepreneurs who were honored for their achievements:

🏅 Sinpex has won the second place in the Early Stage category at the #fintechgermanyaward2022. Congratulations to the team!

🏅 Opinary has won the European Publishing Award in the category "Business Model"!

🏅 OnlineDoctor has won the Health-i-Award 2022!

🏅 ANYbotics secures 2nd place in the AIRA Challenge at ACHEMA 2022 with #ANYmal!

🏅 GUURU was awarded as one of the #TOP25Scaleups 2022!

🏅 rready AG was selected as one of the #TOP100SwissStartups2022!

🏅 RightNow Group was ranked in the list of the 1000 fastest growing companies in Europe 2022 by Financial Times!

🏅 vestr was chosen as the best "Portfolio Management Solution - External Supplier"!

🏅 Futurae was included in the CyberTech100 for the third year in a row as one of the most innovative CyberTech companies.

🏅 Pia Frey, founder of Opinary made it to the list of the most important digital thinkers!

We are very happy about the many successes of our startups as well as their founders and congratulate you once again!

You are the core of everything we do and it makes us very proud to see how you develop and defy all challenges!

 

About EquityPitcher

There were also various events in our own organization that are definitely worth mentioning in a review of the year:

Already at the beginning of 2022, we were able to announce that Andrea Buhofer would complete the management team around Hermann and Sascha as a partner. In May, our path led us from the west of Zurich to Binz, where we were able to move into our new offices.

 

In June, our annual Come Together took place. Again, we are pleased to see that this event is becoming more and more popular every year. With 150 participants we will soon have to think about changing the location or limiting the number of participants.

Prof. Dr. Joseph Jung (Alfred Escher biographer) literally inspired the guests with the pioneering spirit of Switzerland with his keynote speech.

With Tobias Reichmuth, Sylvie Mutschler v. Specht and Roland Siegwart we had a really great panel, which was moderated by our VRP Prof. Thomas Schmitt in his usual grand manner.

 

Another highlight for us was our first "Portfolio Exchange Day", where all our portfolio companies came together to exchange ideas on the topic of sales and the associated challenges. Again, we had great guest speakers in Tobias Häckermann, Bernd Schopp and Christof Roduner, who shared their experiences with our founders.

 

Probably the most important event for us as equity pitchers was celebrated on September 30, 2022 - the closing of our second fund. With a total volume of 45 MCHF AuM, we are extremely happy - also considering that the macroeconomic and geopolitical issues did not necessarily make fundraising easy.
Many thanks again to all investors who have put their trust in us and made this possible!

What remains for us to say?

In any case, we are happy to announce a great new additions to our team, Jack Gasser- we welcome you to the EquityPitcher family!

We spare ourselves and you an outlook on 2023, as the future seems to be unpredictable anyway. Therefore, we have simply made it our resolution to remain true to our principles and to continue to work with full enthusiasm, conscientiously and professionally, as well as to relentlessly pursue our goals - regardless of the external circumstances:
To find the best startups and support them in their goal to make the world a little bit better, to the best of our abilities!

Since this is only possible with and through you, dear investors, partners, advisors & startups, all our thanks go to you!

We are very much looking forward to experiencing everything that may come in 2023 together with you!

With warm regards

The EquityPitcher Team

Andrea, Aurelio, Hermann, Jack, Sascha und Vanessa

 

Read More