Corporate ventures — what is their strategy?

The idea of our own venture capi­tal company was born in mid-2013. In Decem­ber, we offi­ci­ally laun­ched Mobile Ventures [http://www .mobile-ventures.com]. In orga­niza­tio­nal terms, all Group-wide venture acti­vi­ties are bund­led within one company. The company has suffi­ci­ent capi­tal to make its own invest­ments, even in the short term. Above all, we would like to open up new busi­ness areas around mobile commu­ni­ca­ti­ons and digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies, and thus ideally also achieve cross-ferti­liza­tion with regard to our own products.

Within the Dril­lisch AG Group, there are nume­rous oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer parti­ci­pa­ting compa­nies real added value. These include, in parti­cu­lar, access to mobile networks with favorable rates, end-custo­mer reach, high tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise, and years of know-how in online marke­ting. These were further reasons to start with our own venture company. We call this prin­ci­ple Mobile-For-Equity: The asso­cia­ted company is given access to the services of the Dril­lisch Group. In return, Mobile Ventures recei­ves shares in the company. Of course, pure cash invest­ments or mixed forms can also be considered.

There is no sepa­rate fund. Mobile Ventures invests directly with its own capital.

The aim of Mobile Ventures is to finance young — ideally tech­no­logy-orien­ted — compa­nies that could act as inno­va­tion drivers and open up new busi­ness models. The invest­ment amount for young compa­nies is in the order of up to 1 million euros per invest­ment. A complete purchase or take­over of compa­nies in an advan­ced growth phase is also not ruled out. We take a look at the case-by-case.

We only laun­ched in Decem­ber of last year, so we haven’t made an invest­ment yet. Nume­rous discus­sions are alre­ady taking place.

We are expe­ri­en­cing a real upswing in the mobile sector. Dril­lisch AG is also bene­fiting from this with its core busi­ness as a wire­less services provi­der and MNVO. We are fully embra­cing this phase with our price-leading smart­phone offe­ring and are also very well posi­tio­ned with sales focu­ses in high-growth e‑commerce channels.

The current boom in the mobile sector is based on trends such as mobile first, always on, big data, second screen, smart­phones, tablets and much more. Some tech­no­lo­gies or busi­ness models are indeed hyped in the scene. Howe­ver, we are convin­ced that funda­men­tal chan­ges in busi­ness models in the estab­lished indus­try are immi­nent. The next upco­ming chan­ges could be in the areas of weara­ble tech­no­lo­gies, smart home, smart tvs, mobile first, Inter­net of Things and connec­ti­vity. For exam­ple, we are curr­ently talking to a company that is deve­lo­ping a plat­form for the trans­mis­sion of body data. Body infor­ma­tion is trans­mit­ted via the networks to medi­cal moni­to­ring centers, where it is analy­zed in real time. Some­thing like that is super exci­ting for us. Many start­ups are deal­ing with ideas that are in the mobile appli­ca­tion space. “And always expect the unexpected.”