EcoG, the world’s first open, hardware-agnostic IoT OS for EV charging, successfully closed its seed investment with Helen Ventures and Ananda Impact Ventures as investors.
Helen Ventures, the investment arm of the Finnish energy company Helen Ltd, and Ananda Impact Ventures, a leading European impact investor closed an investment round with EcoG. EcoG is a Munich-based start-up founded by three experienced professionals from the areas of e-mobility, IoT and venture capital in 2017, developing the world’s first open, hardware-agnostic IoT operating system for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. The syndicated investment is EUR 1.5 million in total including existing investors, Techstars, Fontinalis and Katapult Accelerator.
The challenge of the EV charging industry is to manufacture and operate reliably and professionally a continuously growing installed base of charging infrastructure and different EV models. Additionally, the current business models are not sufficient to provide enough monetization and business integration. The EcoG IoT operating system is the solution to these challenges.
EcoG’s technology is used by hardware manufacturers and charging point operators to professionalize and simplify the manufacturing of charging stations, as well as easily integrate and customize EV charging stations. The business integration based on the EcoG IoT OS enables the monetization of EV charging by creating new revenue streams, apart from the cost of transfer of energy.
EcoG successfully graduated from the leading mobility accelerator TechStars Mobility in Detroit in 2017 and has been co-founded with the support of Siemens and next47, the investment arm of Siemens.
“We will invest the funds in team, growth and technology. Our first objective is to make our solution available to every manufacturer and distributor looking to make better, more reliable and professional chargers. This funding will allow us exactly to achieve that. It’s great to have the support of our investors. We want to make EV charging reliable, sustainable and profitable in order to make the transition towards electric vehicles hassle-free“, says EcoG’s CEO Dr Joerg Heuer.
“The investment in EcoG complements very well our corporate venture capital portfolio, in which our portfolio company Virta Ltd was recently ranked as the fastest-growing electric vehicle charging platform in Europe by the Financial Times. With our investments, we want to accelerate the development of the e-mobility ecosystem by enabling new solutions to the electric vehicle charging stations “, says Dr Terhi Vapola, Vice President of Helen Ventures.
“The combination of deep technical and systemic know-how as well as the potential to become a key enabling technology for EV charging really impressed us. This is an important time for the mobility transition and we are excited about the possibilities that EcoG’s operating system provides to electric mobility and the strong positive environmental impact we expect”, explains Florian Erber, Managing Partner at Ananda Impact Ventures, adding: “We are happy to welcome EcoG to the Ananda portfolio!”
