World class founding team

The company was created in 2015 at the Team8 Lab, the leading Israeli cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform. Together with former Israeli Defence Force’s intelligence unit 8200 leadership, Amir Zilberstein (CEO and co-founder), Benny Porat (CTO and co-founder) and Galina Antova (CBDO and co-founder) had one mission: put together their previous experience to develop a global adopted solution to secure and optimize the industrial control networks that run the world. Previously the three co-founders had very significant experience; 1/ Amir co-founded Gita Technologies and Waterfall Security Solutions, creating some of the first and strongest security gateways specific to critical infrastructure; 2/ Benny was a security researcher at NorthBit and previously commanded a strategic research team within an elite cyber unit of the Israeli Defence Force; 3/ Galina was the Global Head of Industrial Security Services at Siemens, a unit she actually initiated and built up, after spending 5 years at IBM.

At Aster we are in constant search of inspiring leaders and innovators and we are fortunate enough to start working with a team of such amazing founders.

Large and growing problem to address

Especially in the last couple of years the volume and sophistication level of cyber threats is exploding, with a business falling victim to a ransomware attack every 40 seconds, and attacks growing at a yearly rate of 350%, according to some sources such as the Forbes Technology Council. While IT networks have been typically under scrutiny for several years and relevant solutions have been adopted, IoT devices and in general physical assets have been neglected, thus becoming a preferred target with increasing frequency. We often overlook things that have become must have standards in today’s lives, such as 24/7 electricity supply, cellular communication, emergency rooms and medical care. And we are probably not too much aware that the above are based on critical control systems that are increasingly more targeted by criminal attacks.

This creates a massive opportunity for a company such as Claroty who can certainly aim at becoming the worldwide leader of a new category within the large cybersecurity space.

Their unique approach

Claroty is an Industrial Control System cybersecurity solution that aims at securing and optimizing OT networks that run on critical infrastructures. The company’s OT security platform is designed to address safety and reliability requirements necessary to protect industrial networks.

We have seen many companies within the nascent industrial cybersecurity space, many of them were quite ambitious and developing credible technological answers to the main problems identified as critical by large customers. However, we’ve been struggling to see a demonstrable scalability, from both a market/commercial and a product point of view. What we are observing at Claroty looks different: we have been impressed by the capability of the company to adapt easily to industrial control systems’ different protocols – which is in general a big headache –, stacks and network configurations from one customer to another. Furthermore, the strong expertise of the OT world they have developed, and thus their ability to render information that is easily understandable for OT teams and to enable a genuine collaboration between IT and OT worlds is a clear advantage to convince different decision makers – CEO/CSO, CISO, Engineering.

Such a company, dramatically transforming the way we can take care and improve traditional industrial networks, relying on a deep expertise in cybersecurity and led by an amazing team, perfectly fits with Aster’s model. Today, Claroty team has a big challenge ahead of them: to scale fast and consolidate their market leadership, especially in regions such as Europe where they are relatively less present. And this is where we can help. Our goal and mission are to act as a catalyst thanks to our ecosystem of industrial partners and to stand by the company to support their ambitions to become the category leader of the global industrial cybersecurity market. Through our Business Hub organization, we will support Claroty to generate and finalize commercial opportunities within and beyond our family of Corporate Sponsors.

Cleantech Group marked certain standout achievements of the last 12 months in its innovation ecosystem during the gala dinner of its 14th annual Cleantech Forum Europe, held in Antwerp, Belgium, on May 15, 2018.

Aster was honored to receive the ‘‘Standout Fundraising Achievement of the Year’’ there.

Standout Fundraising Achievement of the Year awards can be awarded to one (or more) “company, or an investor, active in clean technology in the Europe & Israel region whose fundraising achievement in the past 12 months (in this case, April 1, 2017 – March 31, 2018) stands out to the Cleantech Group’s analysts for any combination of its audacity or its novelty, its impressive execution or the quality of its syndicate, or its pioneering and example-setting nature.”

Find below a few pictures of the awards ceremony and of the ”AI and the Future of Energy” panel, both with Jérome Joaug, Principal at Aster (© Steffanie Klaassen).

Discover the pictures of the event:

Aster was happy to be sponsor of the first VC Night, the official Viva Technology launch party set in Montorgueil Street on May 23rd. From 7pm until late, Aster welcomed international startups attending VivaTech in a casual atmosphere at Le Lézard Café. And now, find us at Viva Tech!

Discover the pictures of the event:

A need to redesign existing public transportation systems

Public transit systems are highly subsidised in France. Local authorities support 60 to 75% of the budget, while the rest is paid by the end-users. These incentives have enabled the development, in most large cities, of a very high-quality mass transit network. The design of a mass transit network that brings a high quality of service while enabling a low environmental footprint of commuters at the best cost is a challenge in any case: the estimation of flows before creating the infrastructure is uncertain, and the evolution of the flows over the years is rarely compatible with the lack of flexibility of the infrastructure. Therefore, some lines are over-crowded (try Line 13 in Paris at 8.30 in the morning if you want to experience it), and some lines are under-optimized in suburban and rural areas, either with an important passenger cost/km, or with a quality of service that does not match commuters’ expectations.

Private companies want to be part of the game

Local authorities used to organize the shared mobility: from the traditional tramways and buses to the more innovative bike sharing systems, they do not generally operate the services but grant companies such as Transdev or JC Decaux a right to do so.

Start-up companies are changing the game: Chariot created several private and flexible bus lines in San Francisco (and got acquired by Ford), CityMapper launched its own bus line in London, Ofo and Mobike have deployed millions of free-floating bikes around the world, and the new kid in town, Bird, deploys thousands of e-scooters in California.

Sometimes operating in a grey zone from a regulatory point of view, they all have the same motto: customer-centric (convenience for the commuters), and VC-backable (infrastructure-light if not asset-light).

Among them, a few short-distance carpooling platforms.

Karos, driving the growth of short-distance carpooling

Historically, there has been several attempts in the carpooling space but only few of them eventually succeeded. For the record, Blablacar was actually launched as a short distance carpooling app and then pivoted to long distance trips. In theory, daily carpooling offers obvious advantages: less congestion, less greenhouse gas emissions, more flexibility for commuters. However, such initiatives used to be hindered by cultural, financial and technical barriers, including the lack of trust in the network, the lack of liquidity – usually leading to the desertion of the platform –, and the low attractiveness for drivers.

We believe such barriers can be overcome thanks to a tech-enabled great customer experience and the support of enterprises and local authorities; both at the core of Karos’ ambitious project.

The company already provides a seamless and flexible in-app customer journey, based on in-house algorithms that learn your habits and only suggest the most relevant commuters. It also integrates intermodality options, which makes the application even more valuable.

Finally, we believe in the alignment of interest of enterprises and local authorities with Karos, to promote the app as an alternative and complementary offer to their transport networks. Karos has already proven its value through a proof of concept that was recently experimented in the Paris region, alongside Ile-de-France Mobilités. The application has experienced a tremendous growth over the last 9 months (8% weekly growth in active users), attracted thousands of daily users and captured 50% of the market share. Many cities and regions think about similar projects, and the financing of short-distance carpooling is expected to be a key topic of the Mobility bill, expected to be approved in the coming months.

Such a company, transforming the mass transit ecosystem with a digital and community-driven experience fits perfectly with Aster’s model. Our goal and mission are now to act as a catalyst thanks to our ecosystem of industrial partners to facilitate Karos’ geographic expansion in France and abroad.

A graduate of the École Polytechnique and the University of Cambridge in 2012, Jérome Joaug co-founded Cambridge Nanosystems, a leader in the environmentally-friendly production of high-quality graphene which was sold in 2016. After this first foray into entrepreneurship at age 24, he was a business angel for several months for some ten startups in the fields of cleantech and education. In 2017, he co-founded a new company, Nymbly, which specializes in the management of connected objects and was also sold in early 2018. He joined Aster as Principal in March 2018.

“I am delighted to join a leading venture capital management company whose areas of expertise and international dimension are fully in line with my background and aspirations. My experience as an entrepreneur will give me an edge in furthering Aster’s development”, said Jérome Joaug.

“I am thrilled to welcome a serial entrepreneur to the team. Jérome will enhance our expertise in the areas of artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things and Deep Tech and will drive Aster’s development in the UK. In hiring him, we are also sending a clear signal to startups: who better to understand their needs than an entrepreneur?”, added Jean-Marc Bally, Aster’s Managing Partner.

At France Invest’s first Investment & Industry event, held in Paris on March 6th 2018, Jean-Marc Bally, Managing Partner of Aster, presented Aster and its role towards startups in financing breakthrough innovations in the industry sector.

To watch the replay:

Why the time is right for DCbrain

The company was created in 2014. After a couple of years of experiencing the utilities and logistics operators market and enforcing their technical support, DCbrain has found an engaging route using Artificial Intelligence to optimize flows, prevent anomalies and create network evolutions. We met the company last year during a couple of events and we’ve been immediately impressed with their achievements in a bootstrap manner and their proper vision of the market, especially regarding the challenges ahead for complex network operators.

Drawing on this, the main question was to decide to what level we should to get involved. For investors, it’s sometimes easier to answer to the founders: “look, it’s interesting but it’s too soon for us”. However, this time, we felt we had to join the adventure from an earlier point: the more we were spending time with the founding members, the more we were convinced by the fact that DCbrain has the potential to become a game changer for large industrial sectors that deal with complex networks – and proof has already been made by their early commercial wins achieved without any funding.

Why Aster believes in it

Today, DCbrain is selling to large corporates that are dealing with complex networks. Classical tools have been designed to secure networks, but they typically fail when it comes to network’s daily management. DCbrain has built a solution to balance the networks’ flows to address not just security but also additional key needs, for instance i) optimize the operating budget and decrease the associated costs and ii) manage capacities to allow higher volumes, all in a real time manner. This way DCbrain allows customers to react quickly to unforeseen events, such as technical faults/failures, changing weather conditions, strikes, etc.

In addition, we also see some reinforcing trends that will increasingly call for new ways to manage large and complex networks:

• in the case of Utilities, we see more and more complexity as more distributed intermittent capacity and prosumer consumption endpoints get connected;
• in the Logistics, we see an increasing level of demand from more sophisticated clients, and thus new challenges such as the management of peak times and short time delivery;
• regarding Industry 4.0, we see the need to identify anomalies and gain productivity to optimize the operating processes.

At Aster we strongly believe that the process of energy transition and the acceleration of the decentralized economy are creating enormous pressure on the way we manage physical networks. The need to manage increasing complexity and to react fast to unplanned changes, call for sophisticated capabilities of generating meaningful information from an increasing quantity of data.

Why it’s a match

DCbrain AI driven technology is in our view quite unique in enabling network managers to take advantage of the data available to respond efficiently to the challenges of current and future physical flows, responding appropriately to the customer’s needs, being top line or cost efficiency related.

We also believe that such a company suits the Aster model well. Our goal and mission are to act as a catalyst thanks to our ecosystem of industrial partners. We will stand by the company to support its ambitions to become the reference player of AI driven solutions for large and complex networks for a variety of industries. Through our Business Hub organization, we will support the company to generate and finalize commercial opportunities within and beyond our family of Corporate Sponsors.

Adidas and the Berlin public transport company created a buzz recently by releasing limited-edition sneakers with an integrated fare ticket. In addition to this quirky story, traditional e-ticketing is undergoing a major transformation that could ultimately make the validation and payment process completely transparent for passengers. Following are a few keys to understanding a fast-growing market, particularly since e-ticketing is a channel through which to access passengers and therefore their mobility data.

Mobile devices: the ideal integrated e-ticketing and payment system

After an initial digitization phase in the early 2000’s with the introduction of NFC-based cards such as Navigo and Oyster, e-ticketing has reached a new milestone by allowing public transport users to pay and validate simultaneously, for instance using their bank card as a ticket. Operators see this as an opportunity to both reduce their collection costs (from 15% to 6% of the ticket price according to an Accenture study published in 2015) and improve the passenger experience by saving them a trip to the ticket machine.

Although bank cards and even biometric technologies are sometimes tested, mobile devices are well-positioned to become the ideal integrated e-ticketing and payment system. They offer numerous advantages, such as engaging with the customer by becoming a conduit for real-time information or for sales of additional services.

Traditional players are getting ready and startups are trying their luck

Traditional players are naturally taking numerous measures to adapt their product line. For instance, Siemens is promoting SiMobility JustGo based on Bluetooth Low Energy and beacons technology while moving forward with the acquisition of Hacon. The foursome created by Orange, Gemalto, SNCF and RATP are banking on NFC via their Wizway Solutions joint venture. For its part, Thalès’ e-ticketing division is still searching for its Prince Charming after the missed opportunity with Latour Capital in the spring of 2017.

At the same time, a myriad of startups are working furiously to develop clever solutions that appeal to operatorswho, for a few thousand euros worth of configuration, can test solutions that improve their customers’ seamless experience. For example, MotionTag is conducting a Check-in/Be out proof-of-concept with Deutsche Bahn thanks to the precision of its geolocation algorithm; Israeli startup HopOn is rolling out its ultrasonic beacon technology on buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; and Atsuke has already penetrated a number of Swiss cities with its SMS-based ticketing system and is now targeting the French market…

Gated or not gated? That is the question

NFC, Ultrasonic, WiFi, SMS, QR code, geolocation algorithm, Bluetooth Low Energy…

How to navigate this litany of technologies and which one to choose?

A first market segmentation criterion is the presence or absence of gates in the public transport system. In fact, the presence of gates, a costly but important factor in the fight against fraud, hinders the use of some technologies: increasingly accurate geolocation algorithms (see MotionTag or GeoUniq) could, in theory, completely eliminate the validation process (Be In/Be Out). They are, for all practical purposes, unsuitable in about half of European cities that use gates in their subway system. In this market segment, the NFC protocol seems to be the popular choice, as evidenced by its recent adoption by New York City Transit.

The second segmentation criterion pertains to the fluidity of the passenger experience.

Integrated e-ticketing in route planners, a sure step in a multimodal world

The concept of mobility-as-a-service is becoming more of a reality every day, for example in tests in the Paris region concerning short-distance carpooling. Karos informs us in its September 2017 deployment report that 20% of its court-voiturage® (short-carpooling) rides are intermodal. The ability to pay for one’s ride in multimodal route planners will therefore be the next step.

E-ticketing therefore goes well beyond a quest for a marginal improvement in the profit margin of traditional operators. For them, it is about staying at the center of the choices made by the end customer, who has many options for getting from point A to point B. It is also about maintaining control of data, a firewall against the GAFA offensive, and the startups we met, which collect passenger data like cautious squirrels, fully understand this.