itembase secures investment from UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund

itembase, the personal inventory platform with offices in San Francisco and Berlin (www.itembase.com), today announced a recent investment from the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, the private equity strategic investment arm of UPS (NYSE: UPS). Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

“We are excited to welcome the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund as a new investor,” said Stefan Jørgensen, founder and Chief Executive Officer of itembase. “This confirms that we are pursuing the right strategy in fulfilling our mission to become the online inventory for everyone and everything.”

“The UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund provides UPS with opportunities to collaborate and learn from companies, like itembase, who are developing new technologies that provide insight into the evolving world of e-commerce,” said Rimas Kapeskas, managing director of the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund.  “We continually evaluate the marketplace and invest in innovative companies through the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund to gain insights into changing consumer demands that will define next generation ecommerce.”

itembase is an online platform for hosting, enriching and providing product identity data. itembase helps sellers deliver post-purchase products and transaction information and buyers to easily access the information in a centrally-organized collection. The platform automatically processes purchased products from various sources, including email, forwarded invoices and checkout integrations at web shops. Receipts, warranties, manuals and many other data points are made available through the digital identity record of the product. Sellers and buyers can host, send and receive their product and transaction records in digital form – all free-of-charge.

itembase signed up more than 30,000 online retailers globally as of the end of April 2014, with a significant share of those retailers based in the United States. Currently, itembase is tracking close to USD $3 billion in annual Gross Merchandise Value while touching more than 16 million unique consumers.

In October 2013, itembase announced funding of USD 3.25 million originating from existing investors including High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Rheingau Founders and German Startups Group, seed-funds such as WestTech Ventures and HR Alpha, and angel investors. Around the same time, former Skype investor Morten Lund joined as Chairman of the Board and the management team was complemented with the additions of Moritz Fichtner as Chief Product Officer and Niels Boon as Chief Financial Officer. Fichtner was previously employed by Audible, an Amazon Company as Product Manager. Boon was previously active as Head of Strategic Finance at Zalando and before that spent significant time with McKinsey & Company.

Press contact:
Stefan Jørgensen, Founder & CEO
US Cell Number: +1 650 267 3478
GER Cell Number: +49 176 4205 7916
Email: sj@itembase.biz

About itembase
itembase (https://www.itembase.com) was founded in 2011 by Danish serial entrepreneur, Stefan Jørgensen and CTO Ramo Karahasanin cooperation with the Berlin-based professional co-founder team of Rheingau Founders. itembase is an online platform for hosting, enriching and providing product identity data. itembase helps sellers deliver their duties and buyers to easily access their rights in relation to a purchase.

The platform automatically processes purchased products from various sources, including email, forwarded invoices and checkout integrations at web shops. Hereby receipts, warranties, manuals and many other data points are made available through the digital identity of the product. Sellers and buyers can free-of-charge host, send and receive their products in digital form.

itembase generates revenues by charging sellers for apps that help them increase revenues, build customer retention and sell easier and better. One example app creates a product page for an eBay auction or a web shop automatically, another automatically integrates recommendations based on all hosted products. In other words, itembase enables both small and large merchants to work with similar tools and conditions as eCommerce giants like Amazon.

The vision of itembase is to become “the online inventory for everyone and everything” and thereby disrupting the eCommerce market.

About UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund
The UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund is the private equity strategic investment arm of UPS. Established in 1997, the Fund is a corporate venture capital group that focuses on innovation, developing critical partnerships and gaining knowledge returns from its investments in technology companies and emerging market spaces.

UPS (NYSE:UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range of solutions including transporting packages and freight; facilitating international trade, and deploying advanced technology to more efficiently manage the world of business. Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS serves more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. The company can be found on the web at ups.com® and its corporate blog can be found at blog.ups.com. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS.

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:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Curtis MacDonald
Senior Investment Manager
Schlegelstr. 2
53113 Bonn
Tel: +49 228 82300-100
info@htgf.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de