Berlin, 17. December 2020 — Flyability, the leading indoor inspection drone company, today announces that it has raised EUR 7 million in a Series C co-led by Future Industry Ventures and Swisscom Ventures. Existing investor, ETF Partners, is also participating in the round.
Flyability specializes in innovative technology that optimizes indoor inspections in the industrial sector. With the investment, Flyability will focus on the development of their market-leading and innovative products and accelerate global expansion.
Founded in 2014 by Patrick Thévoz (CEO) and Adrien Briod (CTO), Flyability specializes in drone-based B2B solutions for companies with a focus on energy, power generation, chemical, mining and maritime industries. With its technology, the company enables the indoor exploration and inspection of inaccessible and confined spaces. As a result, safety risks for energy workers can be significantly reduced, as well as labor costs incurred from complex manual inspections. In addition, environmental risks associated with the inspection of critical infrastructures can also be identified and prevented.
In the past 6 years, Flyability has grown from a spin-off of EPFL in Switzerland to a company with 100 employees pioneering indoor research and inspections with drones. The company became a global market leader with offices in Europe and the USA and a network of over 50 resellers including China and Japan.
Olivier Schuepbach, Managing Partner of FIV: “Flyability is an ideal investment for FIV fund. The aim of the fund is to identify and support the best among all emerging technology companies in Europe, having considerable potential to shape the future of industry. We invest in ambitious start-ups with unparalleled expertise and innovative visions that deliver excellent technical solutions and demonstrate sustainable company growth. Flyability has convinced our team across the board, and we are very proud to be co-investing with Swisscom Ventures and ETF Partners in the future of the company.”
Future Industry Ventures, a fund jointly initiated by Redstone and SBI Holdings, acts as a financing platform for Scale-ups, driving connectivity, decentralization, sustainability and security in the industrial space. The aim of the fund is to unlock the potential of European assets and excellent innovation hubs that are shaping the future of industry through technological leadership.
“This financing round represents an important milestone for Flyability”, said Patrick Thévoz, CEO of Flyability. “We are developing increasingly complete and complex platform solutions in order to better serve our more than 500 customers worldwide. We are very pleased that FIV, with its unique expertise and network in the field of industrial technology, together with the existing investors Swisscom Ventures and ETF Partners, will be participating in our journey to build a global technology company in our space.”
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About Future Industry Ventures (FIV)
As one of the leading platforms in the field of Industry 4.0, FIV invests in European technology scale-ups in order to raise their potential to an international level and builds global companies out of the EU ecosystem. Focus is on best-in-class innovations that have the potential to significantly shape the future of industry through digitization technologies. Aim of the fund is to foster Scale-ups from the early growth phase and to build strong partner networks between Europe and Asia. In May 2020, Redstone and the Japanese SBI Group initiated FIV.
About Flyability
Flyability is a Swiss company that provides solutions for inspection and examination of indoor, inaccessible, and confined spaces. The safe use of drones inside buildings enables industrial companies and inspection professionals to reduce downtime, inspection costs and risks for workers. With hundreds of customers in more than 50 countries in the power generation, oil and gas, chemicals, maritime, infrastructure and utilities, and public safety, Flyability has pioneered, and continues to lead the way in commercial indoor drone innovation.
About Redstone
Redstone is a venture capital company that initiates and controls specialized sector funds and supports corporate venture capital activities for several international groups. With its VC-as-a-Service model, Redstone is innovating corporate venture capital and connecting established companies with ambitious founders. Redstone can access a database with over 800,000 startups and the specially developed, AI-supported analysis platform. Redstone has an extensive network of international contacts to corporates, investors and various partners. These include, among others, Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures, Daimler, Berliner Volksbank Ventures and the Vogel Communication Group.
About SBI Group
The SBI Group was founded in 1999 as the financial subsidiary of SoftBank and established the world's first internet-based financial ecosystem, which provides a wide range of financial services including securities, banking and insurance (financial services business). In addition, the SBI Group invests in start-ups and helps to build them up (asset management business). The focus is on the areas of research and development, production of pharmaceuticals and natural foods (biotechnology business).
SBI developed into a financial conglomerate in Japan. Under SBI Holdings, Inc., it has developed Japan’s largest online bank in in terms of assets, the largest online securities trading company on a customer basis and the largest online insurance company, going public in 2018. In addition, SBI Investment is one of the world's largest investors in FinTech.
While the SBI Group is changing from a “Japanese SBI” to a “Global SBI”, SBI Holdings, Inc. founded its first European representative office in Berlin in March 2019. In recent years, it has invested more in European start-ups, especially those based in Berlin.
About ETF Partners
ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Our funds come from institutional investors, global corporations, and family offices. We create value by investing in and supporting great European companies that deliver Sustainability Through Innovation.”