IoT Venture GmbH on course for growth

“We are looking for talented employees”

The skilled labour shortage and component supply bottlenecks on international markets posed significant challenges for the company last year. “Both prevented even greater growth,” affirms Chief Operating Officer (COO) Thomas Ullmann. The workforce increased from 25 at the end of 2020 to 40 at the end of 2021. We’re planning to recruit ten more team members by the end of 2022. “We’re looking for talented employees – primarily developers for embedded software, the backend and mobile apps,” adds Ullmann. “Our internal and external communications are thus giving a focus to employer branding this year.”

Triple milestone

IoT Venture celebrated three milestones in 2021 – five years since the company’s founding, the IT’S MY BIKE app’s second birthday and the sales team reporting a significant sales milestone. The 100,000th tracker in all business areas overall was presented to a bike dealer in Munich in December. The team is aiming to surpass 300,000 devices in 2022.

New customers: established brands, innovative SMEs, dynamic start-ups

Business Development managed to acquire new major OEM customers in 2021, including both established companies and young on-trend brands such as the bamboo bike manufacturer My Boo and e-cargo bike manufacturers. „We are growing through established brands, innovative SMEs and dynamic start-ups,“ affirms co-founder Holger Trautmann. IT’S MY BIKE has also been working with the manufacturer of the Bafang electric drive systems since 2021. Products by the two companies can be combined quickly and easily before leaving the factory in the future thanks to elements such as existing slots and cables.” The idea is to develop new services together before the end of the year, including unlocking and locking motors over the air.

“The bike retail trade remains a crucial sales channel for IT’S MY BIKE. We expanded our dealer network for the retrofit market to almost 500 in 2021. However, there is still room for growth here,” states Jürgen Veith. “The aim is to increase the number of partners by 50 percent to 750 by the end of the year. We want to step up our communication activities to achieve this. We are also strengthening our collaboration with our insurance partner Alteos.” Berlin-based insurtech Alteos has been an IoT Venture partner since mid-2020. Among other things, it offers electric bike insurance policies with GPS protection directly in the IT’S MY BIKE app and via its partner shop network across Germany. The combination between the GPS service and the insurance coverage has led to a high success rate for recovering stolen e-bikes – eight out of ten vehicles are returned to their rightful owner.

Cooperative partnership with fleet operators to be expanded

Cooperative partnerships with fleet operators will be further expanded from 2022 onwards. In the future, IoT Venture/IT’S MY BIKE will be offering its customers a platform they can use to manage their electric vehicles digitally, track routes, enter service intervals and activate the recovery service in the event of theft. “Our system and its recovery service not only allow customers to stop thieves in their tracks but also to make optimised decisions,” explains Fabian Wilde-Böcher, Account Manager at IoT Venture GmbH/ IT’S MY BIKE. “Our service is highly appealing to cities and municipalities, e-bike sharing companies, mobility platform providers and e-mobility leasing and rental companies.”

Outlook for 2022

“Even if the components shortage and the search for software developers continues to keep us busy in 2022, we look to the future with optimism,” affirms Ullmann. “Our enhanced tracker technology not only opens up global markets for us in places where the NB-IoT mobile radio standard is not in use or is not universally available yet. It also paves the way for further innovative services in our two business fields. As a result, expanding the service portfolio is a priority task for the development team over the next twelve months and beyond.” “The mid-term goal remains to create a brand landscape under the umbrella of IoT Venture GmbH based on our scalable business model. However, a horizontal extension to the range within IT’S MY BIKE is also conceivable,” states CEO Jürgen Veith.