Key Takeaways
- Founders Adrian Rhaese and Linh Pham left banking to create a Smart City Startup focused on intelligent street lighting.
- ENVIOTECH has secured €1M in pre-seed funding to enhance public infrastructure through smart lighting solutions.
- The retrofit system can upgrade existing streetlights in under 15 minutes, reducing energy consumption by up to 80%.
- Adrian and Linh aim to solve critical safety issues caused by outdated public infrastructure, driven by personal experiences.
- With new funding, ENVIOTECH will expand its pilot projects and develop its technology further, paving the way for Smart City Startup excellence.
Table of contents
Smart City Street Lighting Startup: A Personal Trigger Behind the Founding
Quitting Deutsche Bank to fix streetlights: why these founders walked away from banking to launch their Smart City Startup.
The moment Adrian Rhaese’s best friend was rushed to the hospital following a biking accident caused by streetlights switched off due to rising electricity costs, he could no longer ignore how vulnerable outdated public infrastructure has become. How can one of the world’s strongest economies still rely on outdated public infrastructure? Why is safety one of the first things to be compromised when costs rise? This is a clear example of the urgent need for a Smart City Startup focused on street lighting improvements
What began as a deeply personal turning point became the starting point for ENVIOTECH, a Frankfurt-based smart city startup building intelligent retrofit kits for street lighting.
Smart City Street Lighting Startup: €1M Pre-Seed Funding Secured
Today, ENVIOTECH announces a €1M pre-seed financing round led by Jürgen Fitschen, former Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank, with participation from Joachim Drees, former CEO of MAN, Alexander Eyhorn, founder of Bidirex, and Danilo Jovicic-Albrecht, co-founder of Vialytics. Moreover, this investment marks an exciting milestone for a startup in the smart city sector.
In order to build ENVIOTECH, Adrian had to abandon the prestigious career path he had lined up at Deutsche Bank. Linh Pham’s path was similarly unconventional: she founded her first company at just 15. After a station at Deutsche Bank, she could have chosen the safer route – but instead returned to entrepreneurship to build her second company with ENVIOTECH. Together, they represent a generation of founders less interested in comfortable career tracks than in solving hard, unglamorous problems with real-world consequences. Clearly, their journey highlights the determination behind launching a Smart City Startup.
“We didn’t start ENVIOTECH because the smart city industry excited us,” said Adrian, “We started it because we witnessed firsthand what happens when critical infrastructure is not managed intelligently enough. When streets go dark, the consequences are immediate, for safety, for quality of life, and for trust in public systems. That is exactly the problem we are solving.”
A Scalable Solution for Cities
ENVIOTECH helps cities upgrade existing streetlights without having to replace them entirely. Its retrofit system can be installed on existing lighting infrastructure in under 15 minutes and allows municipalities to dim, monitor and manage streetlights more intelligently. This reduces energy consumption by up to 80%, lowers costs and improves public safety. As a smart city startup, ENVIOTECH is transforming urban lighting solutions.
The company also received early external validation through its acceptance into the EWOR Fellowship, the world’s most selective founder fellowship.
„When Adrian told me he had left Deutsche Bank to improve street lighting, I immediately knew what kind of founder I was dealing with. The best founders we invest in don’t chase trends. They pursue problems that no one else wants to solve. Adrian and Linh are exactly that kind of founder,“ says Daniel Dippold, founder and CEO of EWOR.
With the new capital, ENVIOTECH will expand pilot projects and rollouts with municipalities and infrastructure partners, further develop its product and technology portfolio, and build the foundation for its next stage of growth. The ambition is to make existing urban infrastructure smarter, more efficient, and easier to manage, starting with street lighting. In summary, ENVIOTECH is setting a path for Smart City Startup excellence.
Quelle: ENVIOTECH GmbH
Picturecredits: Ivegnia Möbus
