bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH is invest­ing in Zepta Tech­nolo­gies GmbH together with TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sach­sen and other investors. Zepta is a spin-off from Chemo­va­tor and spe­cial­izes in dig­i­tal solu­tions and sus­tain­abil­ity in pest con­trol. The start-up offers an IoT-based, data-dri­ven solu­tion that replaces tra­di­tional and envi­ron­men­tally harm­ful meth­ods and makes the mar­ket more effi­cient. The seed round serves to fur­ther develop the prod­uct, accel­er­ate growth and acquire customers. 

Zepta, a start-up for dig­i­tal pest con­trol with branches in Sax­ony and Thuringia, has suc­cess­fully com­pleted its first round of financ­ing and secured a seven-fig­ure sum. Investors are TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sach­sen, GIMIC Ven­tures, bm|t from Thuringia and Chemo­va­tor, BAS­F’s incu­ba­tor pro­gram. Zepta intends to use the fresh cap­i­tal to accel­er­ate its growth, acquire cus­tomers and become the indus­try leader in dig­i­tal pest control. 

Cli­mate change and the result­ing ris­ing tem­per­a­tures are caus­ing the pop­u­la­tion of rats and other pests to increase expo­nen­tially — they are still spread­ing dis­eases, destroy­ing infra­struc­ture and jeop­ar­diz­ing agri­cul­tural har­vests. At the same time, tox­i­co­log­i­cal baits are being reg­u­lated ever more strictly. Com­pa­nies urgently need envi­ron­men­tally friendly alter­na­tives — and this is pre­cisely where Zepta comes in. The mar­ket is fac­ing a mas­sive trans­for­ma­tion and will become much more impor­tant in the future. Experts esti­mate that global sales will grow to around 30 bil­lion euros by 2028. 

Zepta offers an IoT-based, data-dri­ven solu­tion that replaces tra­di­tional and envi­ron­men­tally harm­ful meth­ods. Instead of check­ing baits man­u­ally on a reg­u­lar basis, Zepta enables 24/7 mon­i­tor­ing in real time. Thanks to the smart mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem, baits con­tain­ing active ingre­di­ents are only used when nec­es­sary. Exist­ing traps can also be retro­fit­ted with the solu­tion. This reduces the num­ber of unnec­es­sary deploy­ments by up to 90 per­cent, saves com­pa­nies high costs and min­i­mizes the indus­try’s eco­log­i­cal foot­print. Zepta sup­ports com­pa­nies with var­i­ous B2B coop­er­a­tion options, depend­ing on the size of the busi­ness and the num­ber of sen­sors required. 

Lukas Deuscher, co-founder and CSO of Zepta: “I became inter­ested in pest con­trol at an early age, as my father was in the same indus­try. We have now launched a prod­uct on the mar­ket that only com­bats rats in the event of an actual infes­ta­tion and does not use active ingre­di­ents pre­ven­tively. This is super-effi­cient and there­fore good for humans and ani­mals — just not for rats and other unwanted rodents.” 

Markus Bold, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of BAS­F’s Chemo­va­tor: “Ris­ing costs and stricter envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions are forc­ing the indus­try to rethink. Zepta pro­vides a smart solu­tion that does not yet exist in this form — we see enor­mous poten­tial here in a mar­ket that is grow­ing rapidly worldwide.” 

Sören Schus­ter, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sach­sen: “Zepta has a strong team, has already won over its first cus­tomers and is a great exam­ple of the region’s inno­v­a­tive strength, demon­strat­ing that tech­nol­ogy from Sax­ony is in demand world­wide. We look for­ward to sup­port­ing the com­pany in its development.” 

Katja Butz­mann, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of bm‑t: “The demand for pest con­trol solu­tions is steadily increas­ing world­wide and the young team of Thuringian and Saxon founders offers a solu­tion with its inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­ogy to enable estab­lished play­ers in this growth mar­ket to gen­er­ate excess returns. As a ven­ture cap­i­tal investor, we are very happy to be involved.” 

Tomas Burck, Man­ag­ing Part­ner at GIMIC Ven­tures: “Zepta is a real game changer — they are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing tra­di­tional pest con­trol with dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. Through the inno­v­a­tive com­bi­na­tion of IoT, data analy­sis and automa­tion, they are achiev­ing a com­pletely new level of effi­ciency. We at GIMIC Ven­tures are con­vinced that Zepta will per­ma­nently change the mar­ket and are delighted to accom­pany them on this journey.”

Zepta Tech­nolo­gies GmbH is a start-up based in Dres­den, which was founded in 2024 by Mar­tin Cir­illo-Schmidt, Lukas Deuscher and Nick Lei­d­ing. It spe­cial­izes in dig­i­tal solu­tions and sus­tain­abil­ity in pest con­trol. Through real-time mon­i­tor­ing, Zepta reduces man­ual processes, min­i­mizes envi­ron­men­tal impact and makes the mar­ket more effi­cient. Zepta is a spin-off from the Chemo­va­tor, BAS­F’s busi­ness incubator.
Mar­tin Cir­illo-Schmidt | Man­ag­ing Direc­tor | +49 176 32546363
martin@zepta.de | https://www.zepta.io/de

The TGFS Tech­nolo­giegrün­der­fonds Sach­sen pro­vides tech­nol­ogy-ori­ented founders with equity cap­i­tal for the seed and start-up phase. The fund was first launched in 2008 by the Free State of Sax­ony (includ­ing ERDF fund­ing) and Saxon finan­cial insti­tu­tions and has since sup­ported over 100 start-ups. In 2023, the TGFS started its third fund gen­er­a­tion. The TGFS focuses on young, inno­v­a­tive, tech­nol­ogy-ori­ented com­pa­nies that belong to the ITC, semi­con­duc­tor and microsys­tems tech­nol­ogy, med­ical tech­nol­ogy, life sci­ence, envi­ron­men­tal and energy tech­nol­ogy and new media sec­tors and have their head­quar­ters or busi­ness premises in Saxony.
www.tgfs.de

beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH (bm|t), based in Erfurt, is the lead­ing address for cor­po­rate invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages twelve funds with a total vol­ume of around 445 mil­lion euros, which invest in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and devel­op­ment phases — whether in the start-up and growth phase or in com­pany succession.
www.bm‑t.de

Chemo­va­tor is BAS­F’s busi­ness incu­ba­tor and early-stage investor. In addi­tion to BAS­F’s exist­ing inno­va­tion land­scape, Chemo­va­tor offers a pro­tected space to test new busi­ness ideas, prod­ucts or inno­v­a­tive ser­vices and turn them into investable and scal­able busi­ness models.
Chemo­va­tor was founded in 2018 as a sub­sidiary of BASF SE and is based in Mannheim. Here, Chemo­va­tor offers an uncon­ven­tional start-up envi­ron­ment with plenty of room for cre­ativ­ity. From early val­i­da­tion to suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­iza­tion, all ven­ture teams receive sup­port from expe­ri­enced entre­pre­neurs and investors who have built star­tups and new com­pa­nies from the ground up. Their sup­port ranges from coach­ing and men­tor­ing to pro­vid­ing extended net­work­ing opportunities.
www.chemovator.com

GIMIC Ven­tures is a sin­gle LP ven­ture cap­i­tal fund based in Karl­sruhe that spe­cial­izes in the financ­ing of pre-seed and seed start-ups in the DACH region. The focus is on dis­rup­tive B2C and B2B busi­ness mod­els, par­tic­u­larly in the areas of HealthTech, Green­Tech and DeepTech.
Inspired by the suc­cess story of the Game­forge founder, GIMIC Ven­tures is a “game changer” investor that sup­ports vision­ary founders who have the poten­tial to change their indus­tries in the long term. The fund focuses on entre­pre­neurs who set new stan­dards in their respec­tive mar­kets with inno­v­a­tive ideas and dis­rup­tive technologies.
In addi­tion to cap­i­tal, the fund offers com­pre­hen­sive sup­port through spar­ring, port­fo­lio events and work­shops as well as access to a strong net­work. With a flex­i­ble and founder-friendly approach, GIMIC Ven­tures acts inde­pen­dently of polit­i­cal or cor­po­rate strate­gic inter­ests. The fund sees itself as a part­ner at eye level and sup­ports start-ups from the early phase through to scal­ing with quick deci­sions and prag­matic solutions.
www.linkedin.com/company/gimic-ventures