January, 24 2022 Green light for safe cycling and smart cities: Dashfactory GmbH closes follow-up financing round with bm|t

Suc­cess­ful prod­uct launch of DASHBIKE and go-live of urban data plat­form DASHTRACK with bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen as lead investor

Dash­fac­tory GmbH has laid the foun­da­tions for fur­ther growth with a financ­ing led by bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh.

Dash­fac­tory devel­ops and sells safety prod­ucts for indi­vid­ual mobil­ity as well as a data-based solu­tion for improv­ing the traf­fic infra­struc­ture in cities. The found­ing idea was a safety cam­era for cyclists that only records in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, espe­cially when the legal min­i­mum dis­tance is breached or a crash occurs. DASHBIKE has already been suc­cess­fully launched on the mar­ket. Via pre-orders alone, Dash­fac­tory achieved six-fig­ure sales just four weeks after the prod­uct launch in 2021. Through crowd­fund­ing and the Dash­fac­tory store, inter­ested cyclists were able to secure the inno­v­a­tive device ahead of time. The first pro­duc­tion batch of thou­sands of units is already sold out, and the prod­uct will soon be avail­able in retail stores.

In addi­tion to the DASHBIKE safety cam­era, Dash­fac­tory has built a dig­i­tal busi­ness model, the DASHTRACK urban data plat­form. This enables cities and urban plan­ners to effec­tively and effi­ciently improve their exist­ing trans­port infra­struc­ture with a focus on cycling and infra­struc­ture data. Dig­i­ti­za­tion based on valid data accel­er­ates plan­ning processes and eval­u­ates the effec­tive­ness of struc­tural infra­struc­ture mea­sures. DASHTRACK went live in Leipzig at the begin­ning of 2022 and is now avail­able for broad roll-out. Another DASHTRACK instal­la­tion will be imple­mented in Milan in the near future.

“We are thrilled that the mar­ket­ing of DASHBIKE has started so suc­cess­fully and that with DASHTRACK we can now also real­ize our vision of safe indi­vid­ual mobil­ity by means of a dig­i­tal solu­tion for smart cities,” say the founders and CEOs of Dash­fac­tory, Lelia König and San­dro Beck, both of whom are pas­sion­ate cyclists. Katja Butz­mann, Senior Invest­ment Man­ager at bm|t, adds: “Cycling is boom­ing, espe­cially in pan­demic times. The bicy­cle mar­ket has grown sig­nif­i­cantly once again and has reached record lev­els. Like­wise, smart city appli­ca­tions are expe­ri­enc­ing a rapid increase in demand. With our fur­ther invest­ment in Dash­fac­tory, we aim to ben­e­fit from these devel­op­ments and empower the ambi­tious team for fur­ther success.”

The cap­i­tal raised with this financ­ing round will enable Dash­fac­tory to mar­ket DASHBIKE and DASHTRACK more broadly.

About Dashfactory

The vision of Dash­fac­tory GmbH is to increase gen­eral road safety, both pre­ven­tively and reac­tively. A high pri­or­ity is given to the fac­tor of sus­tain­abil­ity. From its head­quar­ters in cen­tral Ger­many, Dash­fac­tory aims to become a lead­ing inter­na­tional provider of safety prod­ucts and con­cepts for indi­vid­ual mobil­ity, opti­mally com­bin­ing hard­ware and soft­ware solu­tions. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found under https://www.dashbike.de and https://www.dashfactory.de.

About bm|t

bm|t, based in Erfurt, is the lead­ing address for equity invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages nine funds with a total vol­ume of around EUR 350 mil­lion, which invest in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — from the start-up and growth phases to com­pany suc­ces­sion sit­u­a­tions. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion about bm|t is avail­able at www.bm‑t.com.