• bm|t, MBG Sax­ony and a US-Amer­i­can busi­ness angel invest in the start-up Dash­fac­tory, located in the cen­ter of Germany
• The com­pany, which started with a ‑data-pri­vacy-com­pli­ant cycling safety solu­tion, expands its busi­ness model to include a B2B dig­i­tal division
• Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the first bicy­cle dash­cam Dash­bike© starts in spring 2021

To secure pro­duc­tion and pre­pare for com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the data-pri­vacy-com­pli­ant bicy­cle dash­cam, bm|t is invest­ing in Dash­fac­tory GmbH together with MBG Sach­sen and a US-Amer­i­can busi­ness angel as part of a fol­low-up financ­ing. The mul­ti­ple award-win­ning start-up estab­lishes another mar­ket appli­ca­tion of its tech­nol­ogy by uti­liz­ing sen­sor data col­lec­tion and eval­u­a­tion in order to improve traf­fic infrastructure. 

From bicycle dashcam to traffic infrastructure optimization

So far Dash­fac­tory has devel­oped a data-pri­vacy-com­pli­ant safety cam­era that uses enhanced bike lights to increase the vis­i­bil­ity and safety of cyclists. Now, the cen­tral Ger­man start-up is also mak­ing a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to improv­ing cycling infra­struc­ture by dig­i­tiz­ing and anonymiz­ing sen­sor data col­lec­tion and con­duct­ing data analy­sis together with cities.

Pilot project with the city of Leipzig

Last year, Dash­fac­tory started a pilot project together with the city of Leipzig to sup­port the city in its goal of increas­ing the attrac­tive­ness and safety of its cycling infra­struc­ture based on robust data. The anony­mous sen­sor data will high­light the cities dan­ger spots where over­tak­ing fre­quently occurs under 1.50 meters and other dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. Like­wise, road­way con­di­tions, highly-fre­quented routes, stand­ing and wait­ing times, also in rela­tion to the time of year and time of day can be ana­lyzed. This analy­sis enables effi­cient new con­struc­tion and demand-ori­ented expan­sion of a con­tin­u­ous net­work of bike lanes. In 2021, fur­ther cities in Ger­many will fol­low, as well as the first cities in another Euro­pean coun­try. In the future, Dash­fac­tory will also employ arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to gen­er­ate traf­fic fore­casts and real-time traf­fic measurements.

Using the pandemic situation as an opportunity

«Dur­ing the lock­down, the bicy­cle mar­ket ben­e­fited extremely from a change in mobil­ity behav­ior and grew by 12% within a few months,» said Lelia König, Co-Founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Dash­fac­tory GmbH. «Due to miss­ing com­po­nent deliv­er­ies and devel­op­ment delays caused by the Corona sit­u­a­tion, Dash­fac­tory has focused on struc­tur­ing as well as grow­ing our team and mak­ing it even more diver­si­fied in terms of soft­ware and hard­ware skills for the future. The prod­uct devel­op­ment of fur­ther inno­v­a­tive phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal prod­ucts will hap­pen in our inter­nal devel­op­ment depart­ment in the future. Addi­tion­ally, exist­ing prod­ucts have been devel­oped fur­ther, and upselling and cross-sell­ing mod­els have been designed.  All Dash­fac­tory GmbH prod­ucts are 100% devel­oped and pro­duced in Ger­many,» adds San­dro Beck, Co-Founder and Man­ag­ing Director.

Multiple award-winning start-up with ambitious plans

Hav­ing already passed through the Spin­Lab Accel­er­a­tor, TRIP Accel­er­a­tor, EIT UM Spe­cial Covid by XPRENEURS Accel­er­a­tor (Unternehmer­TUM), Dash­fac­tory was selected as one of the 25 most promis­ing star­tups in Europe out of sev­eral hun­dred appli­ca­tions to the EIT Urban Mobil­ity Accel­er­a­tor. Together with the cities and part­ners of the pro­gram, the top­ics Smart City, Urban Data and Urban Mobil­ity will be pro­gressed in Europe. Dash­fac­tory intends to use this oppor­tu­nity to make cycling safer, expand its busi­ness model, and open up more mar­kets, ini­tially within Europe.

«We are proud of the immense progress Dash­fac­tory has made within just one year of our ini­tial invest­ment and are happy to con­tinue to sup­port the com­pany in its upcom­ing growth,» said Katja Butz­mann, Senior Invest­ment Man­ager, bm|t. Chris­t­ian Mor­dow­icz, Invest­ment Man­ager of MBG Sax­ony adds, «We are happy to sup­port the startup in its fur­ther cor­po­rate devel­op­ment and upcom­ing prod­uct launch.»

Next steps

To launch ini­tial sales, Dash­fac­tory will start a crowd cam­paign at the begin­ning of the new cycling sea­son in March 2021 to increase national and inter­na­tional aware­ness of the inno­v­a­tive Dash­bike© bicy­cle dashcam.

On April 1 of this year, Dash­fac­tory will start the deliv­ery of the first Dash­bike dash­cams to those who pre-order.

About Dashfactory

Dash­fac­tory GmbH started in 2019 with the aim of increas­ing the safety of indi­vid­ual mobil­ity, espe­cially cycling, by means of a data-pri­vacy-com­pli­ant safety cam­era with enhanced bike lights. In the mean­time, dig­i­tized data col­lec­tion and analy­sis to opti­mize traf­fic infra­struc­ture is also part of the Jena and Leipzig-based start-up´s offer­ing. The mul­ti­ple award-win­ning com­pany is about to launch its prod­ucts and is imple­ment­ing pilot projects with sev­eral cities for the dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture appli­ca­tion of its technology.
https://www.dashbike.de

About bm|t — beteiligungsmanagement thüringen gmbh

bm|t is the first address for invest­ments in Thuringia, Ger­many. bm|t invests in start-up teams and com­pa­nies in the Free State of Thuringia with a clear aim of gen­er­at­ing pos­i­tive invest­ment returns. This is how inno­va­tion and eco­nomic growth in Thuringia are financed. bm|t cur­rently man­ages ten funds with a total vol­ume of over EUR 440 mil­lion and invests in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in nearly all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — from the start-up and growth phases to buy­outs and other suc­ces­sion cases.
www.bm‑t.com

About Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Sachsen mbH (MBG Saxony)

Mit­tel­ständis­che Beteili­gungs­ge­sellschaft Sach­sen mbH is a pri­vate invest­ment com­pany with pub­lic fund­ing. Its mis­sion is to improve the equity base of small and medium-sized enter­prises in order to enable them to achieve sta­ble cor­po­rate devel­op­ment. For that pur­pose MBG invests in start-ups as well as estab­lished com­pa­nies in the com­mer­cial sector.
www.mbg-sachsen.de