Colonia Technologies was introduced to Plug and Play by the lead investor, Octopus Ventures, who we collaborate closely with on investment opportunities. Colonia is a logistics start-up from Germany with 16 employees in Cologne and Berlin. The company is Germany's first provider of a digital sharing platform for commercial vehicles. Colonia has the vision to unite all commercial vehicles into one shared fleet. They enable road freight professionals to share vehicles through a safe marketplace with seamless payment solutions and superior fleet management software.

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) have limited capacity to operate a commercial logistic fleet due to the size of their operations. A limited number of trucks and trailers represent an economic loss and a bottleneck for operations. At the same time, demand and supply mismatches create idle times for commercial vehicles that represent costs for SMEs. Colonia decided to transform these costs into an opportunity by facilitating the sharing of vehicles among logistics companies through a secure marketplace, offering a comprehensive fleet management software that streamlines operations and enhances efficiency. This innovative approach empowers logistics businesses to optimize their fleets and navigate the industry's challenges effectively.

Meet the team behind Colonia

Given their background in the transportation and logistics industry, we found a great team spirit and strong expertise in the logistics space. When we spoke to Kaspar and Jakob, we found the ingredients for a resilient and ambitious team rooted in deep industry knowledge. Hearing their personal stories and work experiences, we immediately understood that this team could bring this company to success, and we decided to bet on them.

Why we're excited to invest

We’re thrilled to have invested in Colonia because we strongly believe this old market is ripe for disruption. We interviewed multiple stakeholders in many industries and realized that our corporate network faced this problem. We saw that the sharing economy models could be applicable in B2B spaces. We’re excited to be backing companies like Colonia that are improving productivity and efficiency in a core industry of the European economy.