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enabl raises 3.2 million euros in pre-seed financing round

13.06.2023 Daniela Musial-Lemberg News
In the round, strong partners come on board for further growth such as LEA Partners GmbH as lead investor, Rethink Ventures, another.vc and business angels such as the founders of ProGlove (Konstantin Brunnbauer, Thomas Kirchner, Jonas Girardet, Paul Günther, Manuel Bönisch), Henning Lategahn as well as Prof. Wolf Michael Nietzer . MBA . LLM. from WOLFMAN.ONE VC.

The KIT spin-off enabl raises 3.2 million euros in a pre-seed financing round. With LEA Partners as lead investor, as well as Rethink Ventures, another.vc, the founders of ProGlove and other business angels, the team was able to assemble a strong consortium of investors. The company, founded in 2021, offers material handling-as-a-service with its Forklift Remote Automation technology. The fresh capital will flow into the development of the team and the product.

The Bottleneck in the Supply Chain and the Challenges of Automation

The demand for skilled personnel in logistics, especially for driving forklift trucks, is higher than ever. According to a labour market report, forklift drivers are among the top 10 most sought-after jobs in Germany, accounting for just under 2% of all jobs. Strong fluctuations in supply chains are causing problems for the strained logistics sector. Automation solutions are expensive to purchase and inflexible, existing driverless transport vehicles are severely limited in their driving environment and cannot implement more complex tasks even in the foreseeable future. enabl has set itself the goal of eliminating these problems:

  • Remote control: with remote control technology, it is possible to remotely control industrial trucks regardless of location. For a perfect perception of the environment, several cameras and sensors are used.
  • Material handling-as-a-service: Customers flexibly book transport orders with enabl, which are carried out from different locations, supported by artificial intelligence.
  • Automation: During driving, control and environmental data is collected, which is used to train self-driving models. Through these, one person can look after several vehicles

enabl was founded in May 2021 by KIT alumni Nik Schmidt, Pedro Henrique Romano de Carvalho, Johannes Schantz, Julian Wadephul and Philipp Kautzmann. The team previously worked together for over 3 years in the field of automated mobility. With the automation of forklifts based on remote driving technology, the company has found a solution to the growing challenges and trends in intralogistics.

In July 2022, the start-up was our start-up of the month, you can find the whole interview in the related podcast episode.

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