Proceeds will enable product commercialization, business expansion, and CE certification. INERGIO successfully closed a Pre-Seed round of CHF 1.25 million. The round was led by Privilège Ventures SA. The StartAngels Network (SAN), DART Labs, and a group of private investors participated significantly in the financing. We interviewed CEO and Founder Mahmoud Hadad to know more about his entrepreneurial path.
INERGIO Technologies SA, develops flexible fuel cell electrical power generators with a mission of going through clean energy transition step-by-step. The company has developed a minimum viable product and will use the proceeds of the financing to initiate its product commercialization, CE Certification, and expand its production capacity.
When asked about INERGIO, Lucian Wagner, General partner at Privilège Ventures and board member, stated: “We have been extremely impressed by the technology and the team behind it. INERGIO can play an important role in producing electricity from fuels such as propane, given that hydrogen is perennially late and very complex to handle”.
‘’We are very thankful to all our supporters, partners, customers, and indeed our talented team who have helped INERGIO to get to this stage. And now we are extremely happy and proud that we have reached another major milestone. The financing will help INERGIO to finalize the product development and initiate product commercialization, taking us to next level in our corporate development plan. Besides, we are very thrilled to count on the extensive experience of our investors as well as their extensive international network ’’ said Mahmoud Hadad, CEO, and founder of INERGIO.
Mahmoud, how will the new investment help you to reach your vision?
The fund will be used to further advance our product development, finalize our pilot tests, and obtain CE certification. Basically, it will help us to turn from a pre-revenue startup to a company with an already commercialized system.
You won Venture Kick in 2020. How did it help you lay the foundation for your growth and today’s achievement?
Winning Venture Kick competition is not easy, there are three stages. We need to reach our milestones for each stage. This means for the projects and startups who manage to win the competition it brings a clear credit showing that at least throughout a year the team managed to deliver what they promised and successfully passed tough jury sessions. This is indeed a crucial factor for investors. Moreover, it helped and pushed us to take more and more time to validate and explore our different business cases and assumption, which is necessary to build a viable business model.
You also participated in ESA BIC Switzerland and were selected on the TOP 100 Swiss Startups Awards in 2021. How did it leverage your fundraising strategy?
TOP 100 was a very good recognition, not only for the outsiders but for us as well. It shows that you are among the top players in Switzerland and of course, the others know it as well, and it’s been appreciated by experts.
ESA BIC CHF was a great achievement because it opened doors for us to a new market, it provided us different supports both in terms of technical and business development. It gave us also financial support to further develop and validate our product and decrease the risk of investment for our investors.
When, and what, was your inspiration to found INERGIO?
The very basic idea of INERGIO is coming from my Ph.D. project and throughout that period I was trying to find different ways to turn our lab project into a product. I cannot say it was that successful, but it gave me enough confidence to take the initial steps towards building INERGIO.
What is your advice for the potential Engineering entrepreneurs launching companies in Switzerland today?
I do agree that it’s tricky to launch a company because based on statistics most likely it will be a failure. But what I see in it – besides the impact that we could potentially have in people’s life – is personal development. The learning curve is very steep, and the experience is incredible. So, if in the end, it does not end up somewhere, who cares, you learned a lot. And start building your team with the right people since day one.
INERGIO Closes CHF 1.25 Million pre-seed financing round led by Privilège Ventures – Venturelab