The future chief financial officer at the rental electronics start-up Grover comes from the air taxi pioneer Lilium.
Berlin The Berlin rental electronics start-up Grover aims to go public in the medium term. Company founder Michael Cassau has announced this several times in the past. And now, with Michael Andersen, Cassau is bringing the expertise in-house.
As co-head of finance, the experienced manager helped steer the IPO of Munich air taxi pioneer Lilium on Wall Street. “Grover is clearly well positioned to continue growing,” says Andersen, who was born in Denmark and has already worked for the bottling plant manufacturer Krones and the plant manufacturer Gea in the past.
Grover rents consumer electronics such as smartphones, laptops or digital cameras to multiple users over the entire lifecycle and has developed a platform for companies to manage their own tech products.
Grover is now worth more than Lilium, too. Because after the merger with the empty shell (Spac) Qell in September 2021, things only went downhill for Lilium.
In the meantime, the Munich company is no longer worth $2.8 billion, as it was when it went public, but less than $400 million. That’s significantly less than Grover, which as a so-called unicorn has a valuation of more than one billion dollars.
Dane should further professionalize the team
Andersen, 55, succeeds Thomas Antonioli at Grover, who worked there for six years. Andersen, who is both a German and a Danish citizen, is to further professionalize the structures in the finance team at the start-up founded in 2015. He has already done this at Lilium, where he was also responsible for raising fresh capital.
>> Read here: Gorillas, Taxfix and Co. – Will these 36 German start-ups survive the crisis?
Just last year, Grover raised around €300 million from an investor group led by the Energy Impact Partners fund. In September, the company also received a EUR 270 million asset-backed loan from financial investor M&G.
Grover has big plans. Despite the ongoing economic weakness, the Berlin rental electronics start-up wants to double its sales this year. Last October, gross annual recurring revenue was €221 million.
Grover rents electronic devices such as iPads, cell phones and computers to consumers and corporate customers.
(Photo: dpa)
“Our company has been growing at over 100 percent per year for the last few years and we intend to continue at this high pace,” says Cassau. The company now has a solid basis for increasing profitability.
Job cuts ended
In order to get the costs under control, Grover, like many other start-ups and technology companies, has recently cut back on employees in particular. The Berlin company currently has 400 employees. Last summer there were 460.
“The company has grown strongly in recent years and is now focusing on achieving profitability more quickly,” said a spokeswoman for job cuts at the end of 2022. There is no general hiring freeze.
At the beginning of the year, Grover had 600,000 active subscriptions. In the coming year, Cassau does not want to make any more losses for the first time and is aiming for cash flow break-even. Then the income should match the expenses. This is an important yardstick, especially in the start-up industry, as it enables business activities to be carried out with almost no additional outside capital.
More: High-Tech Gründerfonds can invest even more in the future