siOPTICA wins Constantia New Business as strategic Investor

Jena based siOPTICA GmbH has signed a shareholder agreement with Constantia New Business GmbH, the corporate venture capital arm of Constantia Industries AG, Vienna. With the newly won capital siOPTICA will extend its product portfolio of switchable privacy filters and also will move with its products into new markets. Currently the siOPTICA products are mainly used in ATMs and other payment terminals.

siOPTICA has specialized in the development of switchable privacy filters. The siOPTICA privacy solution allows secure pin entry on displays of ATMs and payment terminals and at the same time reduces skimming and fraud on these devices.

There is also an increasing demand for visual privacy in other markets. Numerous large companies have instructed their employees to only use their mobile devices in the public or on business trips when a privacy filter is applied to them. In the current state of the art, privacy filters are applied on top of the display and usually have a negative impact on brightness and with that lead to increased power consumption.

Constantia New Business now became the main shareholder of the company besides bm|t (beteiligungsmanagement thüringen gmbh).

In the course of the investment from Constantia, seed investor High-Tech-Gründerfonds II (HTGF II) could profitably sell its shares in siOPTICA.

„With Constantia New Business, for the first time we could win a strategic investor that does not only support us financially, but also offers synergies with production facilities, worldwide market penetration and operational aspects.” stated Dr. Markus Klippstein, Managing Director and Founder of siOPTICA.

“Constantia New Business mainly aims for investments in young innovative companies that are in the stage of market entry. We were fascinated by the siOPTICA technology and see a huge market potential”, says Arno Langwieser, Investment Manager at Constantia New Business. “We are looking forward to support the experienced Management team of siOPTICA on their way to further grow the company.”

Dr. Guillem Sagué of HTGF explains: „ We are really pleased that we could support such a serial entrepreneur like Dr. Markus Klippstein again on his way to success. With our exit, siOPTICA had the chance to take such a well-renowned new investor on board. Everything fitted perfectly”.

About siOPTICA:
siOPTICA GmbH was founded in 2013 in Jena/Germany with the goal to establish innovative and special solutions in the market, primarily in the field of optics. The company offers technologies in the field of privacy filters that can screen data from unauthorized views, whereas the company’s products do not suffer from the state-of-the-art brightness loss and furthermore they offer different modes of operation. siOPTICA’s solutions offer great advantages in the fields of ATM/ Banking/ Retail/ Payment terminals, logistics/secure access, data security as well as consumer electronics.

siOPTICA is a member of the global ATM Industry Association „ATMIA“ as well as in the photonics network “Optonet e.V.“.

siOPTICA recently has been awarded with a Red Herring Top 100 Europe award.

Contact: Dr. Markus Klippstein, Managing Director siOPTICA, mailto:mk@sioptica.com

More information about siOPTICA can be found under https://www.sioptica.com

About CIAG / CNB
Constantia Industries AG is a private company based in Austria which has been existing for more than 40 years and which targets international markets. The company currently employs more than 3,000 people and has a turnover of more than 750 million €. Target markets of the group’s corporations are the building industry and its suppliers, the furniture industry, sporting goods, engine and generator building, aviation as well as the solar and energy business.

Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Constantia New Business GmbH, the corporate group invests into young enterprises that work in the field of technology or address social challenges.

More information is available under www.ciag.at

Contact:
Arno Langwieser
Constantia New Business
mailto: langwieser.a@ciag.at

About bm|t
The Erfurt-based bm|t beteiligungsmanagement thüringen gmbh – a subsidiary of the Thüringer Aufbaubank – is the first address for investment in Thuringia. bm|t currently manages six investment funds with a total volume of 250 million €. bm|t invests in innovative companies of all high-yield sectors and in all stages of a company’s life cycle, from start-up to IPO or MBO.

Contact:
Cornelia Böse
Investment Manager
Tel.: +49 361 74 47 606

About High-Tech Gruenderfonds
High-Tech Gruenderfonds 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 Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the KfW Banking Group, as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 576 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 304 million HTGF II).

Contact:
Dr. Guillem Sagué
Senior Investment Manager
mailto: g.sague@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de