New Ökovation Ventures fund launched

The new fund is backed by SalsUp founder Bernhard Schindler and entrepreneur Gerold Wolfarth, among others.

Ökovation Ventures is a new SME fund for start-ups from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Up to 750,000 euros are to be initially invested per start-up, with the fund aiming to invest up to a maximum of five million euros. The focus is primarily on software start-ups in the seed phase. The shareholders include SalsUp founder Bernhard Schindler, Scalup founder Josef Köppl, Bk Group founder Gerold Wolfarth as well as Robert Hornsteiner from FactorP and Burkhard Schneider from Beewell Business Events.

In addition to financial support, Ökovation Ventures also wants to help the founders with expertise, network, marketing, service and sales. "We don't just want to be a pure financial backer, we want to support our start-ups with a whole range of gigantic opportunities," says Managing Director Gerold Wolfarth in an interview in Venture Capital Magazine. For example, the start-ups have access to The Grow network and the Invest2grow mentoring program and can launch Kickstarter campaigns on ScalUp.

So far, the fund has invested in four start-ups. These include the car subscription model Nucarmo, the insurtech Fresh Insurance, the furniture start-up Flexirio and the mobility start-up Ottobahn.