After two and a half years, High-Tech Gründerfonds has outgrown windeln

February 27, 2013

In a round of growth financing, High-Tech Gründerfonds has sold its share in Urban-Brand GmbH (Windeln.de) to an international consortium of investors.

Windeln.de (“diapers.de”), Germany’s largest online store for everyday baby products, was founded in 2010 by Konstantin Urban, Alexander Brand and Dagmar Mahnel. Their assortment currently includes more than 20,000 products.

In 2010, High-Tech Gründerfonds provided seed financing for the company together with DN Capital and several business angels. It became apparent early on that in spite of the known low gross margins in the drugstore sector, the company was able to realize sustainable growth and the relevant KPIs were moving in the right direction. Acton Capital came on board in 2011 in the first follow-up round of financing to support the company’s growth.

Another financing round was recently concluded to fund further expansion, especially in other European countries.

In this round, the investors MCI Private Ventures, 360 Capital Partners, Acton Capital Partners and DN Capital took the place of several investors from the early phase via a secondary buyout. High-Tech Gründerfonds also used this opportunity to dispose of its shares.

“For us this is a terrific success: A very profitable exit in which we multiplied our investment,” says Dr. Björn Momsen, who was responsible at High-Tech Gründerfonds for their commitment to Windeln.de. “The company’s development impressively showed how you can be successful with e-commerce in Germany. We were able to derive valuable best practices for our portfolio from this experience. We thank Konstantin Urban, Alexander Brand and their team for their great performance in the last two years and our colleagues at Acton and DN Capital for our very good and constructive work together.”

About High-Tech Gruenderfonds
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE Color, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 573,5 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 301,5 million HTGF II).

Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Dr. Björn Momsen
Tel: 0228/823001-00
info@htgf.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de