ICE Gateway, a German LED-lighting company that specialises in its own designs that communicate and control electronics for the M2M infrastructure of smart cities and outdoor facilities of industrial customers, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from a public/private partnership.
The investor, High-Tech Gründerfonds, is a financial entity that includes funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as seventeen corporations ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gründerfonds has about € 573 m under management in two funds (€ 272m HTGF I; € 301.5m HTGF II).
The company is hoping to bag more contracts with local councils and other smart city supply chain companies to meet EU regulations, which require the replacement of mercury-vapour-based lamps by 2015. This creates a market opportunity of over 30 million streetlights in Germany that will be replaced. ICE Gateway intends to use this window of opportunity for the outdoor LED market, in order to install a broad base of M2M communication gateways and offer additional services.
“Lamp poles are positioned at strategic locations and will take over a more important role, than simply being used as street lighting. The lighting itself should be seen as one component of the overall city infrastructure for logistics, information and security. This is why we are developing a holistic solution that is easy to use and which eliminates investment risks for our customers.” said ICE Gateway’s Chief Executive officer, Ramin L. Mokhtari.
“Especially exciting is the integration of lighting in the M2M networks of telecommunication firms. ICE Gateway will be then optimally positioned to offer further value added services in the field of smart city,” said Investment Manager of High-Tech Gründerfonds, Dr. Guillem Sagué.
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests € 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of € 2m per portfolio company in follow-on financing.