Munich-based Teqcycle gets backing of T-Venture Holding

By Nicel Jane Avellana

Feb 06, 2014 10:47 AM EST

T-Venture Holding has backed Teqcycle Solutions, a statement about the funding said. Financial details about the investment were not disclosed. T-Venture Holding is the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom, which invests in young firms that show economic and technological synergies with the business units of its parent firm. It holds its head office in Bonn.

Teqcycle Solutions was spun off from Teqport Services, a company that has specialized in seeing to it that ICT products are properly disposed or recycled. Headquartered in Munich, Teqcycle Solutions was founded in January last year. It provides trade-in and reuse solutions for mobile devices in Europe, offering a certified, multi-step take back and reuse program that is transparent. Aside from Deutsche Telekom which is one of its major partners, the company's clients also include popular retailers, big corporations and government agencies.

According to a statement about the investment, the Barkawi Group, Teqcycle's majority stakeholder and the management also joined T-Venture in the financing round. Antitrust authorities will still need to approve the investment.

Through Teqcycle's Shop-Take-Back-Solution, retail partners and their customers are given an app-based or web-based solution that computes a mobile phone's trade-in value. The figure arrived at is then subtracted right away from the price of an item purchased at the retailer. Through the solution offered by Teqcycle, customers can simply go to a Telekom shop and save on a new purchase by trading in mobile phones manufactured by any company and operator. Corporations, on the other hand, can also utilize Teqcycle's Business-Phone-Take-Back-Solution. The company guarantees that all data will be completely deleted, the statement said.

T-Ventures's Thomas Vogel said in the statement, "We see a very attractive market for Teqcycle and strong growth potential, as the company tailored its services very well to the needs of retail partners, manufacturers and operators. This creates opportunities to scale the business strongly. We are pleased to support this development with an investment by T-Venture."

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