February 3, The Hague. Today, VenturesOne Group and Unknown Group have officially announced the completion of their merger. The newly merged company will be known as Unknown Group, located in The Hague and Singapore.

Unknown is an early-stage venture capital and business development firm, supporting founders and industry leaders to successfully bring innovations to the market: a “Venture Engine®”. Unknown’s experience in global startup scouting and corporate venturing, combined with the investment expertise of VenturesOne, strengthens the ambition to increase the success rate of innovations that address pressing local and global challenges. 

VenturesOne has built a diversified portfolio and investment structure and scaled companies from seed investment to IPO. With offices in The Hague and Singapore, their investment portfolio includes programmatic advertising market leader- JustPremium, mechanical exoskeleton pioneer – Skelex, natural skincare and cosmetics manufacturer – Naif, and  leading provider of data analysis from satellite and aerial imagery – Geospatial Insight, amongst other shareholdings in Food, Education and Insurtech. “We go beyond known with the founders of impactful ventures. Venturing shoulder to shoulder, with skin in the game, empowering them along their journey with a global scaling network and entrepreneurial expertise.” – Edward de Jager, Chairman of Unknown Group

Established in 2008, Unknown Group has developed a global network in innovation and entrepreneurship. Unknown partnered with more than 200 corporate and governmental organizations to scale open innovation and corporate venturing activities, such as DSM, Fujitsu and NATO. Unknown’s global startup competition, “Get in the Ring”, provides access to startups and talented founders in more than 220 cities, offering a global platform for thousands of founders every year to test, validate and scale their solutions. Previous Get in the Ring winners include Indonesia’s IoT fishfeeding machine maker eFishery, Israel’s grasshopper producer for the food industry Hargol FoodTech and South Korea’s braille smartwatch maker Dot Incorporate each of which has subsequently secured significant investments. The winner of the competition in 2013, EyeVerify, was acquired by Ant Financial three years later for USD 100 million.

Unknown Group’s portfolio includes the Global School for Entrepreneurship – an accredited University of Applied Sciences with a 4 year full-time bachelor program on entrepreneurship, and Cupola XS – a knowledge and innovation centre for SME companies in the renovated prison dome of Haarlem, the Netherlands.  

Hendrik Halbe (CEO Unknown Group) during opening of Get in the Ring office at Apollo 14, The Hague in 2019. Photo credit: Holland Park Media

“Unknown stands for supporting ventures that are intoxicated by the possibilities of global impact, but are real about forging an organic and sustainable growth path” – Hendrik Halbe, CEO Unknown Group

NOTE FOR EDITORS

For more information about Unknown Group and the merger with VenturesOne please contact Rayhaan Imam via rayhaan@unknowngroup.com and +31 (0)63347 7292