enabl raises 3.2 million euros in pre-seed funding round
- LEA Partners, Rethink Ventures, and angel investors such as the founders of ProGlove are joining for further growth
- With Forklift Remote Automation Technology, forklifts can be safely remotely controlled worldwide. Transport orders can be flexibly booked as needed.
- The technology already convinces some industrial companies, including corporations in the logistics and automotive industries.
Karlsruhe, June 12, 2023
Karlsruhe logistics tech startup enabl raised 3.2 millioneuros in a pre-seed funding round. With LEA Partners as the lead investor, as well as Rethink Ventures, another.vc, the founders of ProGlove, and other business angels, the team was able to put together a strong consortium of investors. Founded in 2021, the company offers Materialhandling-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 labor in logistics, especially for forklift operations, is higher than ever. According to a labor market report, forklift operators account for nearly 2% of all positions among the top 10 most sought-after jobs in Germany. Strong fluctuations in supply chains are causing problems for the strained logistics industry. Automation solutions are expensive to acquire and inflexible, existing driverless transport vehicles are strongly 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 material handling equipment independently of location. Multiple cameras and sensors are used for perfect environmental perception.
- Materialhandling-as-a-Service: Customers flexibly book transport orders with enabl, which are carried out from various locations and supported by artificial intelligence.
- Automation: During driving, control and environmental data are collected, which are used to train self-driving models. This enables a person to operate multiple Press announcement website 6 vehicles.
Julian Wadephul, CEO enabl:
In intralogistics, our customers face the challenge of finding employees due to the shortage of skilled labor. There is efficiency pressure, and the automation solutions for forklifts available on the market today are not applicable and flexible enough in many use cases. With our approach of Forklift Remote Automation, we can already handle many processes today and offer a perspective for the future. We can improve both the quality and flexibility of our customers' intralogistics and thus offer a solution to the shortage of skilled labor. With remote control, we are developing the foundation for full automation in near-term future. The strong combination of human drivers and artificial intelligence enables maximum flexibility and facilitates our customers' transition to autonomous operations.
Nils Seele, LEA Partners:
Unlike the progress made in language models such as ChatGPT or Aleph Alpha models that create solutions to the shortage of skilled labor in the white-collar sector, there have been no major leaps in the blue-collar sector. enabl paves the way to solve the problem of skilled labor in the blue-collar market. The first step is material handling in intralogistics - the use cases can also be thought further into many industries.
Alexi Malikotsinas, LEA Partners:
The cooperation with the enabl team over the past few months has once again made it clear to us how enormous the potential for automating intralogistics is. We are impressed by the team's abilities and look forward to supporting enabl, together with our strong co-investors, to finally bring automation to the blue-collar sector.
enabl is developing technology for the automation of forklifts and other materialhandling equipment. With the approach of remote driving, it is already possible to generate enormous added value for enabl's customers through increased efficiency, wage cost differences, and automation of partial process steps, even without full automation. The material handling-as-a-service business model provides customers with a flexible overall service for the intra-company transport of goods.
For this purpose, the young company was able to complete a pre-seed financing round of 3.2 million euros. The lead investor is B2B tech investor LEA Partners, which also specializes in deep tech companies.
About enabl
enabl was founded in May 2021 by Nik Schmidt, Pedro Henrique Romano deCarvalho, Johannes Schantz, Julian Wadephul, and Philipp Kautzmann. The team had 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 for the growing challenges and trends in intralogistics.
About LEA Partners
LEA Partners supports founders and management teams of B2B tech companies at different stages of development in their growth and achieving a leading market position as an entrepreneurial equity partner. In addition to deep tech investments such as Aleph Alpha or Smart Steel Technologies, market leaders such as sevDesk or Flip are part of the LEA VC portfolio.
Contact
LEA Partners GmbH
press@leapartners.de
+49 (0) 721 13 208 700
enabl Technologies GmbH
Julian Wadephul
