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January 22, 2007
German Startup Big In Japan Finds Financing But Not From VCs
IKV++ Technologies AG, a Berlin-based company that develops applications used by developers for modelling big-sized software projects, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from IBB in Berlin and ICAM GmbH on the back of several customers wins like NTT Data, Hitachi, and Toyota in the Japanese market.
Typically, customer wins, especially international ones, will attract VCs to a venture's financing round, but we note that the investors are IBB and ICAM, neither of which is a VC fund with traditional LP/GP structure.
IBB is an investment vehicle whose mandate is "to foster the development of regional businesses in selected areas and to strengthen the local labour market". Contrary to what several German VCs have told the a:c euro -- basically that vehicles like that are not worth watching -- we think that IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft is worth a second look.
If we follow the money and not what VCs say, you will see that IBB's vehicle has announced six divestments since December 2005. It has also managed to steadily increase its ability to find co-investors for portfolio companies. (The image below shows this trend).
IBB sold its shares in Ableton, a quick growing digital audio software startup, last year to a US-based private investor specialized in the sector; sold it shares in print workflow startup to dots gmbh to Konica Minolta and it also had a trade sale of navigation softwre company Gate5 to Nokia, which by all reports was a good exits for its backers. It floated fuel cell startup Heliocentris on the Entry Standard, Germany's junior stock exchange, and a biotech startup it backed, Jerini, floated in December 2005,
IVK++'s other investor is ICAM, which we understand was co-founded Radu Popescu-Zeletin, a TU Berlin prof and director at the well-known Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS). Another one of Popescu-Zeletin venture investments, TwonkyVision GmbH was acquired by Calif-based PacketVideo last year.
Read - Modellbasierte Softwareentwicklung (berlinews)
Link - IBB's press release
Posted on January 22, 2007 08:16 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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