China Ag and Foodtech, Consultant, Adviser, Speaker, Co-Founder and Investor, 6k+ Followers
I was very glad to have advised KKR on this deal! Marta Szczerba Emil Schaefer great job! Hopefully this will be the first of many in this space! After a few quiet years in the cattle monitoring investment space, this is a great sign of confidence in the sector and that livestock monitoring has a lot of room from growth. Hopefully this deal is the first of many in the livestock tech space in 2025! On Smaxtec: Stefan Scherer and the team have shown great energy and passion for their technology and the next phase of growth with KKR investment will be very exciting. The technology and business models can now be taken to the next level. To borrow Stefan’s mantra: health monitoring is crucial to dairy farming, to monitor health you need to monitor temperature and that’s the core of the strength of the SmaxTec offering. #cattle #technology #smaxtech #kkr #investment
Exciting Achievements at smaXtec! I’m thrilled to announce that KKR, one of the largest global private equity funds, is investing in the further growth of smaXtec. At the end of 2019, Jörg Mugrauer introduced me to Zenker Kathrin and Georg Zenker, two startup and scaleup investors from Styria. Although I didn’t know them at the time, we quickly became good friends. They introduced me to smaXtec, a true technological gem that was missing global growth. I was instantly “on fire” and invested in shares. Together with an open-minded board and a highly motivated team, we developed our “4XDouble” strategy, based on a Software-As-A-Service business model. Since then, we have continuously doubled our business, expanded globally, and in 2024, we turned our business profitable. It’s a great honor and a sign of excellence that KKR’s Tech Growth Fund alongside Highland Europe has now agreed to acquire the majority shares of smaXtec. This investment propels our growth plan, solidifying smaXtec as the number one digital disruptor in the dairy health management sector. A big thank you to Marta Szczerba and her team for sharing our vision and moving forward with us. Former shareholders like Benjamin Hubner from Sophora Unternehmerkapital, who positively contributed with his investor background, are also re-investing. The entire management team, including Stefan Rosenkranz (Founder and CPO/CINO), Stefan Rottensteiner (CFO/COO), Maria Irina Leitner (CMO), Chris Howarth (CSO) and Alexander Oberegger (CTO) are all fully excited and committed to shape this next growth phase of the company. This shows a strong belief and commitment to our growth strategy. I would like to thank everyone who made this journey possible so far, such as investors, scientific partners, financial and official institutions and many more. But most importantly, I want to thank all the employees of smaXtec, the entire smaXies team, for their commitment and hard work. Whether in the head office in Graz or in our subsidiaries, your work always comes with a positive personal touch which I appreciate a lot. Thank you for being part of this journey. You all can be proud of changing the dairy industry forever. Rock’n Roll! I’m excited to see what the future holds – it will be great! The journey has just begun. https://lnkd.in/dZYamsQc
Emil Schaefer
2mo
Ian, great to have worked with you - thanks for all your support and hard work to make the deal happen!
CEO @ smaXtec & 4smartmachines
2moIan Lahiffe always great to meet you and hope to see you soon. Stefan