Founded in December 2010, fruux GmbH is developing a solution that automatically syncs contacts, calendars and to-dos through the cloud. The seed investment by High-Tech Gründerfonds and netSTART Venture enables the company to continuously build out the technology and extend the team. This allows the product, which is already wildly successful for individual usage, to move to a full-blown solution for teams and companies.
Münster, March 21, 2012: fruux solves the problem of working with contacts, calendars and task across different devices in a cross-platform environment. The use of open standards such as CardDAV and CalDAV makes it easy to deploy across different devices and many different vendors. This also ensures that the user’s data does not suffer from vendor lock-in.
fruux has it’s roots in the Apple ecosystem and is currently mostly being used by small teams like agencies and architects as well as individual users. In the future the company’s main focus is supporting additional platforms and the development of features specifically for teams and companies.
“Solving the cross-platform synchronization problem with open standards convinced us. It allows users to liberate their data from their devices and proprietary services. Many teams have to use a combination of technologies to solve this problem or can’t even solve the problem at all. fruux saves a lot of time for these users, by providing such an easy to use and open system. The company faces terrific opportunities with the further development of the product, the addition of developer APIs and integration with third-party services.”, says Jan Sessenhausen, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds regarding the investment.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Kollmann the newly elected business angel of the year 2012 and CEO of netSTART Venture GmbH adds: “fruux has tremendous potential for international growth. There is a clear trend to users owning more and more different devices in a mixed ecosystem. Reliable and easy synchronization of contacts, calendars and tasks is becoming increasingly important. Especially for teams it’s highly valuable to get this problem solved. Stories like Dropbox have shown why fruux has an excellent market opportunity with a reliable and well-implemented product.”
With the investment fruux wants to further develop its product, which is currently mostly popular with individual users, into a solution that can be successfully deployed in teams and companies and at the same time beef up its own team. „We are super exited about the investment of High-Tech Gründerfonds and netSTART Venture.“, says Dominik Tobschall, co-founder and CEO of fruux, “With the help of our investors we are able to accelerate our growth, by providing even better support for teams and companies. The challenge of syncing contacts, calendars and tasks between different systems in an easy and reliable way appears almost everywhere and that’s why already a lot of development has happened in this space. Yet everybody who’s actually tried using these so called existing solutions knows why there’s still a huge demand for innovation: Nobody is actually able to configure and use these tools because they are ‘designed’ for rocket scientists or they are plain and simple broken. fruux is different in a very simple but important detail: It’s reliable, well-designed and actually usable.”
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High Tech Gründerfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2mm per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as twelve industrial groups of ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE Color, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gründerfonds has about EUR 560.5 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million EUR HTGF I, EUR 288.5 million HTGF II).
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Jan Sessenhausen
Investmentmanager
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Germany
(fon) +49 (0) 228 . 823001 - 42
(fax) +49 (0) 228 . 823000 - 50
info@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
http://www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
netSTART Venture empowers young start-ups with an innovative business concept operating in the net economy. We are especially keen on start-ups that inspire to build ideas with a creative and performance oriented management team. We are looking for founders with a clear and simple business concept based on a realistic plan, an innovative technology approach, the will to succeed nationally and internationally and who are interested in a long-term partnership with us. Founders become part of a high-profile network, not just through the funds we invest but also through a 10 year (pre-)seed venture capital experience and our familiarity with the online community and its crowd. netSTART Venture is honored at the "Heaven of Fame" Hall for smart and successful start-up investments at the German Business Angels Association and has become nationally known as a recognized investment partner for many of the leading VC companies in Germany.
netSTART Venture GmbH
Gil Breth
Investmentmanager
Oststr. 11-13
50996 Köln-Rodenkirchen
Germany
(fon) +49 (0) 221 . 935521 - 85
(fax) +49 (0) 221 . 935521 - 86
info@netstart-venture.de
http://www.netstart-venture.de
fruux is a cross-platform solution that keeps contacts, calendars and tasks always in sync. fruux started in 2007 as a bootstrapped student project by Dominik Tobschall.
Based in Münster, Germany fruux GmbH was founded in December 2010 and has since then moved to a full-featured sync solution that works with many different platforms.
fruux GmbH
Königsstr. 32
48143 Münster
Germany
(fon) +49 (0) 251 . 9829 - 5075
(fax) +49 (0) 251 . 9829 - 5079
press@fruux.com
http://fruux.com/press/