In this presentation, Bruno Steis, representing the ultrafiltration membrane manufacturer Inge, provides a concise overview of the company’s products, history, and financing journey, followed by a candid discussion of his experience working with corporate investors from both the entrepreneur and investor perspectives. He explains that Inge develops and sells premium ultrafiltration membranes and subsystems (the T‑REK subsystem) under a “Made in Germany” label, with roughly 1,000 large installations worldwide across water‑treatment applications. Founded in 2000 near Munich, Inge raised about €25 million across five venture‑capital rounds, attracting strategic corporate investors such as Taprocke, Emerald, Siemens, Stone Fund, Entrepreneurs Fund, the biotech venture arm of Bayer Landesbank, and earlier RWE Dynamics. Since August 2011 Inge has operated as a separate legal entity within the BASF umbrella. Steis then outlines the pros of corporate investors – credibility, brand association, access to networks and customers (e.g., Siemens as a distributor), and potential strategic cooperation – and the cons – board‑seat influence, strategic interference, perception of being a “Siemens subsidiary,” special shareholder rights that can hinder exits, internal resistance from corporate business units, and the risk of shifting corporate strategy (as experienced with RWE Dynamics). He concludes with advice for entrepreneurs: remain independent, choose investors carefully, and ensure shareholder agreements do not grant restrictive rights to corporate backers.
Chapters
So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to be here today. Actually, I've prepared three slides. One, I will briefly introduce Inge. Second slide, talking about the history. And the last slide is sharing my experience from sitting on both sides of the table working with a corporate investor. Inge we are an ultra filtration manufacturer. We develop, produce and sell, we believe leading ultra filtration membranes and subsystems we call T REK Subsystem and we sell this worldwide. And we are selling the products with a label made in Germany to demonstrate the quality of our product because we believe we have a premium product we are offering to the market. So far we have about 1,000 large installations equipped with our modules. We have references in all areas for water treatment, drinking water or pre treatment, wastewater reuse, pool water applications and many others. And since August 2011 we are part of BASF. More information you will find on our website, which is www.inge.com. about the history of INGE actually the company was founded in the year 2000. It's located in Kreufenberg and near Munich. This is a very nice place where a lot of people come for vacation. We are in a lucky situation to have the chance to work there. And was a VC backed company by strategic and I should say corporate and financial investors. We had six investors on board. Taprocke is a mid size company in Germany. Mr. Taprocker invested more for strategic reasons with the idea of establishing cooperation with Inga. In 2004, Emerald and Siemens invested in the company. And I had the pleasure to do the investment for Siemens at that time. And I was working with the company as a chairman of the supervisory board for three years. And when we were looking for a new CEO, I felt it's such a great opportunity. I decided to quit my job at Siemens after 25 years and joined Inge. And I never regret that decision. And later on we got Stone Fund from Belgium and Entrepreneurs Fund from Holland on board. And last but not least, in the last financing round in 2009, biotech venture, the venture capital arm of the Bayer Landesbank joined the consortium. One investor, which is not shown here, RWE Dynamics was the first round investor. These guys, they stepped out earlier in the process. In total we have raised about 25 million in five rounds to build up global business and also to build up production facilities and venture capital. Water treatment is very capital, intense business. And as already mentioned, we are proud to be part of BASF since 2011. We continue to operate as a separate legal entity under the Umbrella of basf. So that's why you find on the slides you see the BSF brand on the top and you still see the INGU brand on the bottom. This is my last slide. Just sharing some thoughts on the pros and cons of having a corporate investor on board. First of all, it gives the company a lot of credibility. When Siemens invested in inga, I got feedback from various people. It must be good because Siemens is supposed to have the expertise to make a good assessment of the technology. So if Siemens invests, this must be good. The same is true for bsf. Of course, the brand name helps a lot. There is always, and this is at least in my understanding, for most of the corporate investors, a target to establish a cooperation between the operational units and the portfolio companies of the corporate venture arm. This works out sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Of course they have a network, but they also can be a very good customer. When we started, Siemens was our distributor in the US and still is a very good customer for us. And last but not least, money on the con side. I mean usually the corporate investors want to have a board seat and there is a risk that there's interference in strategy because there might be a tendency to influence the strategy of the portfolio company in a direction where the strategy of the corporate mother company goes. Also funny experience in some areas. We were considered at that time being fully owned by Siemens. So I said, I'm from inga. Oh yes, you are acquired by Siemens. I said no, no, this is not true. Siemens is just a minority shareholder, but the perception is sometimes different. I think it's important when you do the shareholder agreement to make sure that there are no special rights for the corporate investors because this might limit your exit options. If that's a pre emptive right for the corporate investor, this will definitely be a big hurdle for potential acquirers because they believe that this is they are just in the game to drive the price, but they have no realistic chance to get the target. With Siemens, we faced, at least when we started the corporation not invented here syndrome, they had Memcor or they still have Memcor as membrane business in house. And we faced a lot of resistance from the MEMCO people at Siemens. And it took us some time and effort and also support from senior management to overcome this. Last but not least, and this is why I mentioned RWE Dynamics earlier in the process, there is a potential risk if the overall strategy of the corporate investor changes. And in that case RWE decided to go out of the venture business and we had some trouble to get rid of RWE Dynamics because they suddenly had a completely different target. But bottom line, all in all, I think corporate investor can provide very good value to the portfolio companies. And my advice to the entrepreneurs here is in any case, independent. Whether you're talking with corporate investors or financial investors, select your investors carefully. Thank you very much.
