The entrepreneur started iPoint 20 years ago with a partner as a small, automotive-oriented consultancy for process optimization.
(Photo: iPoint)
Stuttgart A BMW i8 is parked at the charging station directly in front of the gate of the iPoint Systems company headquarters in the Reutlingen industrial area. The hybrid electric car belongs to managing director and founder Jörg Walden. The IT specialist started the company 20 years ago with a partner as a small, automotive-oriented consultancy for process optimization.
“As an owner-managed company, we have always grown profitably,” emphasizes Walden. Today, the 57-year-old is driven by a vision: how can industry use digital product passes to help secure a world for future generations?
In any case, companies will have to meet much more environmental and social standards throughout their supply chain in the future. Many industries have set the goal of becoming carbon neutral.
In order to make this comprehensible, companies must collect reliable data in large quantities throughout their entire supply chain and process it in a meaningful way. That’s exactly what iPoint’s business is. 130 employees in 14 branches in Europe, North America and Asia develop services with which companies from different industries can analyze and manage this data.
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The idea behind it: With just a few clicks, it should be possible to find out where a product comes from, under what conditions it was produced and which components are included.
The European Commission has already launched a project on this, and there is also tailwind from Berlin. “The coalition agreement aims to introduce the digital product passport,” says Walden.
New cooperation with BASF
iPoint can already look back on a sizeable customer base. The medium-sized company has been cooperating with the Dax group BASF for four months. The partners want to promote the uniform calculation of CO2 balances for chemical products.
“By working with iPoint, we can establish a standardized approach in our industry,” explains Alessandro Pistillo, Head of Strategic Digital Projects at BASF. The aim is to use the product-specific data across complex value-added and supply networks. They are the basis for digital product passes.
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There are similar initiatives in the auto industry. In addition to the introduction of product passes, it is also about building industry-wide factories for vehicle recycling. The aim is to set up a circular economy with standardized material flows from end-of-life cars as a contribution to achieving the CO2 targets of the Paris climate agreement. Walden believes that circulatory systems will be key, especially with electric cars and the problematic disposal of their batteries.
However, the emerging market is already increasingly competitive. Especially startups get money through financing rounds or from the stock exchange to buy market share. “We have competitors with eight million euros in sales and 20 million euros in losses,” says Walden.
The entrepreneur does not want to be forced out of the market, but also wants to remain profitable. That’s only possible through expansion. To do this, he brought Gro Capital, a Danish investor, on board and sold 55 percent of the shares.
“iPoint not only plays a pioneering role technologically, but also addresses a wide range of current challenges for many companies with its software solutions,” says Morten Weicher, partner at Gro Capital. The number of regulations and product regulations is growing rapidly, and the complexity and uncertainties in global supply chains are increasing. As a result, iPoint fits perfectly into the investment strategy as the first investment in Germany.
In the current year, iPoint intends to increase sales by EUR 2.5 million to EUR 20 million. Revenues are expected to double in the coming years.
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