Goodly Innovations closes Series A+ financing enabling accelerated development & rollout of its AR (Augmented Reality) supported process guidance system for the pharmaceutical industry
MUNICH / LANDSHUT, GERMANY, 7 APRIL 2022 – GOODLY INNOVATIONS, A SOFTWARE STARTUP SPECIALISING IN PROCESS DIGITALISATION AND THE USE OF AUGMENTED REALITY (AR), TODAY ANNOUNCED IT HAS CLOSED A SEVEN-FIGURE SERIES A+ FINANCING ROUND. EXISTING INVESTORS BAYERN KAPITAL, THE VENTURE AND GROWTH CAPITAL COMPANY OF THE FREE STATE OF BAVARIA, AND BAYBG BAYERISCHE BETEILIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT WERE JOINED BY A FAMILY OFFICE AND A NUMBER OF BUSINESS ANGELS. GOODLY INNOVATIONS IS DEVELOPING AND COMMERICALISING A SYSTEM FOR DIGITISING AND MANAGING COMPLEX PROCESSES USING AR TECHNOLOGY, SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVING PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY, PRODUCTIVITY AND QUALITY IN THE BIO-/PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES, LEADING TO SUBSTANTIAL COST SAVINGS.
Goodly Innovations‘ AR sytem OptiworX has already been used successfully to support production processes in a number of pharma and biopharma companies. Many companies face the challenge of regular extended production equipment downtimes in order to accommodate manual set ups and change overs. Depending on the complexity of the equipment involved, downtime can account for over 50 per cent of available production time, leading to considerable costs and loss of capacity.
OptiworX is designed to address this specific challenge. Through use of AR smart glasses or other smart devices, OptiworX guides employees through complex changeover, maintenance and production processes. The system can significantly reduce downtime and individual errors. One of OptiworX’ unique selling point is its ability to enable multi-user and mixed-device collaboration across large industrial manufacturing and packaging plants. Teams of any size can work simultaneously and in real time on complex tasks. The manufacturer-independent modular design of the system enables fast, tailored set-up and integration into almost any production environment. A number of leading international pharmaceutical companies are already successfully using OptiworX.
Goodly Innovations was founded in 2016 by Dr Dirk Schrader and Robert Hoffmeister. Since a Series A financing round in autumn 2019, the Company has entered into a number of new partnerships.
Dr Dirk Schrader, CEO of Goodly Innovations, said: “We are seeing a great deal of interest in our groundbreaking system from leading international companies. The Series A+ round will enable us to leverage this momentum and help us to establish our technology as an international standard by increasing investment in our developmental and commerical capabilites. We would like to thank our new and existing investors for their support and look forward to continued successful collaboration.”
Robert Hoffmeister, COO of Goodly Innovations, commented: “Customers were initially attracted to OptiworX by the substantial improvement in productivity it offers. However, aspects such as quality assurance, greatly accelerated training of new employees and reduction in employee errors are increasingly important to our clients. Our goal is to further expand our technological lead, which will include greater cooperation with machine manufacturers and providers of higher-level software systems.”
GOODLY INNOVATION CEO DR. DIRK SCHRADER AND COO ROBERT HOFFMEISTER
Dr Georg Ried, Managing Director of Bayern Kapital, added: “With OptiworX, Goodly Innovations is filling a major gap in the market and has made outstanding progress since we first invested in the business. The scalable OptiworX system offers clear efficiency and quality advantages to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry while reducing pressure on employees, and we are confident it has potential across many other industries. We believe strongly in the company’s long-term growth potential and support its strategy.”
BAYBG INVESTMENT MANAGER ALEXANDER ULLMANN
Alexander Ullmann, Senior Investment Manager at BayBG, commented: “Using AR smart glasses to give employees a concrete visual approach to complex tasks while enabling large teams to collaborate in real time has proven to be a powerful business model. With new capital to invest in the future, we are in a position to increase product rollout and deliver the long-term success of the Goodly Innovations.”
About BayBG Venture Capital
With its venture capital team, BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Munich, invests in Series A financing rounds and subsequent tech startups. The venture capital portfolio currently consists of 36 technology companies. With an invested volume of more than EUR 330 million, BayBG is one of the major venture capital and investment companies in Germany. In addition to venture capital for startups, BayBG offers small and medium-sized companies equity capital (equity and/or mezzanine) across all company phases and financing opportunities. BayBG thus enables the implementation of innovation and growth projects, the optimization of the capital structure or the regulation of company succession planning.
About Goodly Innovations
Goodly Innovations GmbH is a leading provider of Augmented Reality Solutions for enterprise applications. The product OptiworX is the only multi-user solution to dynamically guide teams using AR. OptiworX was designed as a modular, manufacturer-independent system and allows a fast and individual setup in almost any production environment. www.goodly-innovations.com
About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapital GmbH, based in Landshut, was founded on the initiative of the Bavarian government in 1995. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bavarian LfA Förderbank . As the venture/growth capital organisation of the State of Bavaria, Bayern Kapital provides equity capital financing (ticket size 0,25 – 25 Mio. €) for the founders and their innovative technology companies in Bavaria. Bayern Kapital manages specialized investment funds with a total volume of around €700m. So far, it has invested more than €370m in about 300 innovative companies in the fields of technology in various sectors including life science, software & IT, medical technology, materials and new materials, nanotechnology and environmental technology. Some of the early financed startups realized an IPO (e.G. MorphoSys, voxeljet, Immunic) or gets market leader like EOS Electro Optical Systems, congatec, parcelLab, SimScale and many others. In this way, more than 8000 long-term jobs in sustainable companies have been created in Bavaria. www.bayernkapital.de
Rückfragen: josef.krumbachner@baybg.de, 089 122280-172