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Bonus: This Month in German Startups — Unicorn Stampede
Welcome to This Month in German Startups by Startuprad.io — in a news recording with Chris (from New York City) and me Joe (from Frankfurt am Main).
This is a Bonus Episode covering the Unicorn Stampede in German-speaking countries. This recording is from June 29th, 2021 and all-new unicorns, formed afterward will be covered in our next news podcast, to be published End of September!
You may remember that we had another bonus episode last month covering the rise of Berlin-based fintech Trade Republic to become Germany’s most valuable startup? There is already a new king in the country with Celonis becoming Germany’s first Decacorn (valuation above 10 bn US$, here even 11bn US$). We also see that all of these monster fundings are driven by international investors, especially Softbank from Japan and Tencent from China.
Trade Republic remains Germany’s most valuable fintech for now.
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Meet Germany’s first Decacorn!
Munich-based startup Celonis becomes Germany’s first Decacorn (valued at 11.1 bn US$) with a monster funding of 1 bn US$ for their Series D funding https://buff.ly/3it1Mti
This valuation is 2.5 bn US$ higher than their Series C funding in 2019. Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price Associates co-led this investment round, with the participation of new investors including Franklin Templeton, Splunk Ventures, existing investors Arena Holdings and other, unnamed, investors.
About Celonis:
Celonis offers process mining, for discovering, monitoring, and improving processes. They help you to analyze data from either SAP, Salesforce or ServiceNow to improve operations. This maps out the process landscape, which was formerly done by human consultants, costing thousands of euros each day and staying for months.
Some companies are already adapting to the new circumstances, like Big Blue (IBM), which will train 10.000 consultants in Celonis (https://buff.ly/39OIwBF).
This process mining is important since it is the start for process automation with robots and/or (no-code) workflow tools to improve efficiency.
Germany’s New Unicorns
Scalable Capital
Yet another startup from Munich made it in the exclusive unicorn club, namely neobroker Scalable Capital. They first started out as a robo advisor in 2016. Now they turn increasingly to online brokerage, including offers for traded securities, money market accounts, and term deposits. Their brokerage also offers a Trading Flatrate model.
They raised the most recent investment round, their Series E, of more than 150 m € (~ 180 mn US$), making them a unicorn at a 1.4 bn US$ valuation. They will use the funds to increase their brokerage footprint. With this investment they go head to head with Trade Republic, which we covered in this bonus episode:
They raised in total more than 116 mn Euros (~ 139 mn US$) from investors like BlackRock, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tengelman Ventures, Hedosphia (backed by Michael Bloomberg, learn more here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/blogpost-michael-bloomberg-indirectly-backs-some-of-germanys-most-important-fintech-startups/ ) and recently Tencent, which lead the investment that turned them in a unicorn.
Related:
European neobroker Scalable Capital raises €150M ($180M+) at a $1.4B valuation — TechCrunch https://buff.ly/3csdpgc
Scalable Capital wants to increase its brokerage business, their second line of business (likely in answer to the monster funding of trade republic) in 5 years they want to manage up to 100 bn Euros for clients https://buff.ly/3fvTH56
Scalable Capital fundraise gives Germany its sixth fintech unicorn https://buff.ly/2TUdu69
Forto (formerly Freight Hub)
Forto has been part of “This Month in German Startups” for quite some time. They underwent a re-branding from Freight Hub. The Berlin-based logistic startup raised 200 mn US$ from investors, led by Softbank, valuing them at 1 bn € (1.2 bn US$) https://buff.ly/3y136bx With this funding they added Citi Ventures and G Squared as new investors.
Existing investors include Inven Capital, Iris Capital, Rider Global, Northzone, Cherry Ventures, Italian VC H14, and Maersk, the international shipping giant. Of the existing investors Northzone, Cherry Ventures and Unbound participated in the most recent fundraising round.
The company claims to “develop … scalable, digital logistics technology and services that go beyond transportation from point A to point B”. So far Maersk and Softbank seem to be excited about what they are doing.
Austria’s New Unicorn And Most Valuable Startup
We talked about Bitpanda becoming Austria’s most valuable startup in “This Month in German Startups March 2021,” but now there is GoStudent, which takes the title from them. Go student is a platform for remote tutoring and becomes the 2nd unicorn in the country with a 200 mn € (~240 mn US$) investment led by Softbank and Tencent. The investors value the company at 1.4 bn € (1,67 bn US$) https://buff.ly/3qokCDR
Germany’s Existing Unicorns Are Also Doing Good
Another fintech monster funding: Berlin-based insurtech startup Wefox grabs $650 million at $3 billion valuations https://buff.ly/2S0RKVp
About You, the Hamburg-based online fashion retailer, IPOed in Frankfurt at a 4bn € valuation, raising 828 mn € https://buff.ly/3gvh6o9
Germany’s Rumor-Corns
Rumored to be soon unicorns.
German blank check firm 468 SPAC said on Thursday it had entered exclusive negotiations to buy children’s entertainment firm Boxine for about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion)” https://buff.ly/2UouBNF
Solarisbank is rumored to work on a 100 mn Euro VC deal, making them a unicorn as well. The blogpost from financefwd, a reputable fintech blog also states that the proceeds of the fundraising should be invested to take over a competitor, focusing on other geographies. The spokesperson refused to comment on that https://buff.ly/3d4BxWL. We already talked in our April 2021 news about a SPAC deal for Solarisbank, which was targeted at 2022 anyways. The SPAC deal appears to be not off the table
We will keep you updated, but keep in mind that Startuprad.io’s new are now going into a well-deserved summer break and our next regularly scheduled news episode will go live on September 30th, 2021. Hopefully, the coronavirus will be less of a threat by then and the global economy goes into overdrive.
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