Bridgestone EMEA and Iris Capital announce innovation partnership

Bridgestone Europe NV, Bridgestone’s EMEA subsidiary and Iris Capital, a leading European venture capital firm, have entered a corporate venture partnership to investigate and invest in innovative new mobility services, industry 4.0 and digital transformation technologies across Europe, the Middle-East and Africa.

According to the company, the move comes as part of Bridgestone’s strategy of “rapidly transforming from a tyre producer into a mobility solutions leader”. To do this, the company reports it is following “a digitally-embedded strategy to the benefit of its customers and partners, helping them to take advantage of the shift towards data-based insight, convenience and maximum efficiency”.

Iris Capital invests in digital companies that are disrupting their industries – from SaaS to industry 4.0 in sectors as diverse as security and robots. Moving forward,  Bridgestone and Iris Capital will work together to support “the best entrepreneurs with the industrial expertise from Bridgestone and Iris Capital’s experience as funder of start-ups such as Careem, Mojio, Mister Auto, Unu Motors and Cobi.”

“Over the last few years, Bridgestone has invested heavily in its digital transformation and in particular in its Digital Garage, an open innovation platform, where it has built new capabilities in data collection from sensors and RFiD, platforms, and analytics, and pioneered a range of digital solutions and applications such as Mobox, FleetPulse and Bridgestone Connect”, commented Paolo Ferrari President and CEO of Bridgestone EMEA and Executive Vice President of the Bridgestone Group.

“In 2012, we’ve successfully created a European multi-corporate VC model with the strong support of corporate champions. The past years, we’ve expanded the success of this model with selected new corporate partners and we are very proud to count Bridgestone as an industry expert to enrich IrisNext’s mission,” said Antoine Garrigues, managing partner of Iris Capital, adding:

“Our mission is to identify and fuel promising entrepreneurs and to help them grow and scale their businesses across Europe and beyond. We’re now particularly increasing and sharpening our focus on new mobility services and technologies with our partner Bridgestone.”