Esslingen, 07.04.2022 - MARKT-PILOT, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing start-up from the Stuttgart Region, has closed a seed funding round of 6.2 million euros with the renowned venture capital investor Capnamic. The company offers machine manufacturers a simple SaaS solution that enables companies to automatically research competitive prices and lead times for their entire parts portfolio thus creating a better way to manage the increasingly dynamic and complex parts market. The result: increased parts revenue through market-driven sales pricing as well as transparency regarding times and availability.
With Capnamic on board, the MARKT-PILOT team plans to scale the business and strengthen its leadership position. The 6.2 million euros will be invested in three key areas: Scaling the US market, expanding the software solution capabilities, and strategic growth and development of the newly created 7.8 billion euros software category ‘market intelligence for industry parts’.
"Due to the solution's incredibly high return-on-investment, MARKT-PILOT has already won customers from various industries in its home market in a very short time. There really is no reason why the software should not be used, because this is the only way to fully exploit the revenue opportunities in after-sales. We are convinced that MARKT-PILOT will also establish itself internationally as a leading provider in this vertical software category," says Christian Siegele, managing partner of Capnamic.
The parts business is the most profitable area for machine manufacturers, yet the industry suffers from a lack of pricing transparency. Aligning part pricing with the market competition and part availability has been the industry’s biggest challenge until now. The Esslingen-based start-up MARKT-PILOT has entered the market at the right time with its market intelligence software. In Germany alone, there are more than 65 million different parts in the machine manufacturing sector and more than 8,000 possible procurement sources. The COVID-19 pandemic and, most recently, the war in Ukraine, have placed even more pressure on global supply chains, resulting in increased market dynamics and more pricing instability.
MARKT-PILOT is proud to support machine manufactures and help them better manage the after- sales and supply chain management issues. As of today, MARKT-PILOT used its innovative AI- based software to analyze and optimize parts pricing for over 70 machine manufacturers. The results show that more than 90 percent of parts have high sales and profit potential, since they are either underpriced or overpriced. This means that machine manufacturers are missing out on millions of euros. With the MARKT-PILOT software, PRICE-RADAR, manufactures now have comprehensive market intelligence and thus enable an intelligent market-oriented pricing strategy.
"Thousands of parts are continuously required worldwide and not a single one is benchmarked with the market. Due to this lack of transparency, parts prices have so far always been calculated on the basis of a traditional cost-plus logic. The only solution for this problem is provided by our software, which lays the foundation for the paradigm shift from cost-plus to market-oriented parts pricing.", says Tobias Rieker, founder and CEO of MARKT-PILOT.
Since 2016, the two founders Tobias Rieker and Amin Oumhamdi have been working on the SaaS solution, which determines parts price and lead time information by analyzing tens of thousands of national and international web shops daily. The company has generated market intelligence that has been used by more than 70 industry leading companies to increase their top line revenue substantially.
"With MARKT-PILOT, we were able to meet our demand for market-driven and fair parts prices in a very short time. The identified opportunities create measurable transparency in procurement and sales.", explains Dr.-Ing. Gerd Schöllhammer, Executive Vice President of HELLER Services GmbH and customer of MARKT-PILOT.
Innovation and a down-to-earth attitude go hand in hand at MARKT-PILOT and also characterizes the two founders Tobias Rieker and Amin Oumhamdi. The idea behind MARKT-PILOT was already born in 2016 and was extensively validated before the official founding in 2020. In the beginning, the company was located in the rooms of GründES!, the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences, but already one year later moved to a larger office in the historical center of Esslingen. Bootstrapped from the start, MARKT-PILOT has grown from 2 to 58 employees in just two years and opened its first international office in Chicago in November 2021. Nevertheless, the founders remain loyal to the city of Esslingen, proving that a young high-tech start-up does not need to be located in a metropolis in order to be successful in Germany and beyond.
"The Gründermotor accelerator program, the support of the Campusfounders innovation center, the GründEs! startup initiative and the prestigious German Accelerator funding program have helped us get to where we are today. MARKT-PILOT is one of the fastest growing B2B start-ups in Germany.", says Amin Oumhamdi, founder and CTO of MARKT-PILOT.
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About MARKT-PILOT
MARKT-PILOT was founded in April 2020 by Tobias Rieker and Amin Oumhamdi and is based in Esslingen, Germany and Chicago, USA. With PRICE-RADAR, MARKT-PILOT has developed a unique intuitive SaaS solution that provides machine builders with market intelligence for their parts for the first time. Through the customer-centric software, the company supports machine and equipment manufacturers in establishing profitable and sustainable customer relationships as well as a future-oriented design of the parts business unit.
About Capnamic
Capnamic is one of Europe's leading venture capital investors based in Cologne, Berlin and Munich. The VC invests in outstanding teams from German-speaking countries from pre-seed to Series A. Capnamic's investments include several start-ups with billion-dollar valuations such as Staffbase or Lean IX. All portfolio companies can benefit from a unique network of global investors, industry partners and renowned external founders as well as hands-on support, mentoring and knowledge exchange. The extensive know-how of the Capnamic team is based on a triple-digit number of investments, numerous successful trade sales and IPOs as well as countless entrepreneurial experiences in the investment team. Capnamic is led by Jörg Binnenbrücker, Christian Siegele, Olaf Jacobi and Christian Knott as managing partners.
For more information, please visit: www.capnamic.com
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