Orange today announces that its venture capital arm, Orange Ventures has become a separate legal entity with an increased allocation of 350 million euros, empowering it to be more agile and competitive in seeking out and supporting the best start-up talent worldwide. Orange Ventures invests in high-growth sectors, in areas traditional to Orange expertise such as connectivity, cybersecurity, the digital enterprise, and innovative financial services, as well as new territories that the group is exploring, like e-health.
With offices in Paris and Dakar, Orange Ventures supports start-ups at all stages of maturity, from seed stage start-ups in Africa and the Middle East, to more mature companies in Europe and the United States, with investment tickets up to 20 million euros per financing round.
For Orange, the purpose of Orange Ventures is to promote the emergence of future technological champions who support the transition to an increasingly digital and responsible world, at the service of all, by sharing their innovation capabilities with its 256 million customers worldwide. To achieve this, Orange Ventures differentiates by proposing a highly structured process for exploring and creating flexible and optional synergies between Orange and start-ups.
Orange Ventures aims to achieve the financial performance of the best venture capital investment companies, and will make its investment decisions autonomously. The Orange Ventures team, made up of twenty people, has thus been strengthened with established experts from the venture capital industry, and will also take over the management of the portfolio of the Orange Digital Ventures initiative launched in 2015.
Jérôme Berger, President and Managing Partner of Orange Ventures declares: "our wish is to constitute an organisation which combines the best of both worlds: Orange's business expertise as well as the agility of decision-making and the quality of the financial monitoring of the best investment funds. We closely support each start-up post-investment in order to contribute to its development and facilitate its direct and structured access to the Orange ecosystem whenever it is relevant."
About Orange Ventures
With a 350 million euros allocation, Orange Ventures is dedicated to investments in innovative startups in areas of strategic interest of Orange (Networks & IT, Digital Enterprise, Cybersecurity, and Fintech) and beyond (Consumer platforms, E -gaming, Edtech, Health etc). Orange Ventures also deploys initiatives dedicated to the Africa and Middle East region. Supported by the Orange group, and made up of a team of 20 people, Orange Ventures offers startups in which it invests access to the Group's expertise and the possibility of setting up synergies with its many business units and its 256 million customers in 26 countries. For more information, visit ventures.orange.com or follow us on Twitter @Orange_DV.