Germany-headquartered ship owner and operator Schulte Group has launched a corporate venture capital arm called Innoport.
Innoport will conduct early-stage investments in maritime and logistics-focused startups globally, giving emphasis on Europe and Asia. It will form business alliances with portfolio companies and help them implement pilot projects in the group’s Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) subsidiary.
Schulte has appointed Yiannis Sykas, Cyprus-based director of strategy and product development at BSM, as managing director of Innoport. Niklas Koerner and Haymon Sinapius, who are respectively based in Germany and Singapore, have been named investment managers.
Sinapius said: “We want to see founders, who actively challenge the status quo of how the maritime industry works, to make it better, safer and more efficient.”
Koerner added: “At Innoport, we see ourselves as a provider of capital with industry domain knowledge coupled with access to the right people within our organisation and our network to support the portfolio companies we invest in.”
