Evonik invests in e-commerce platform chembid

The venture capital arm of German specialty chemical firm Evonik has invested in chembid, the world’s largest search engine and market  intelligence platform for chemicals, to strengthen its e-commerce activities. The parties have agreed not to disclose the financial terms of the  deal. 

Chembid was initiated in 2016 by BÜFA GmbH & Co. KG, a  family-owned company. The start-up, based in Oldenburg, Germany, has developed a meta-search engine that connects buyers with suppliers. Chembid  already has more than 50,000 users a month from more than 150  countries. 

“We are very pleased to have Evonik on board as an investor,” said Felix Thalmann, chief executive officer of BÜFA. “Just like BÜFA,  Evonik has a strong focus on innovation and digitalization and so has much to offer in the development of chembid.” 

Evonik will contribute the knowledge gained from the development and operation of its OneTwoChem® digital marketplace to chembid, discontinuing its own platform. Evonik is also enhancing chembid’s offerings by making its digital laboratory assistant, COATINO®, available on the platform. The focus on an independent platform will allow Evonik to leverage its marketing approach at a global scale.  

Chembid also provides a dashboard of  market intelligence such as price trends and demand patterns by  analyzing the search data with intelligent algorithms. The  investment supports the development of an independent digital  sales platform for the chemical industry. 

“As sales platforms gain traction in the chemical industry, it’s  important to be a driver in the digital service space,” said  Bernhard Mohr, head of Evonik Venture Capital. “A strong,  comprehensive and independent platform is desirable for the  chemical industry as a whole. This investment supports that idea  by accelerating the development of the industry’s biggest meta search engine.” 

Like other meta search engines, chembid forwards the search  query to a large number of domain-specific search engines and  returns a unified result. Buyers can find chemical suppliers from  all over the world and compare product offers. Manufacturers and  distributors of chemicals who engage with chembid increase the  visibility of their digital offerings and can ultimately generate new  customers and increase chemical sales via the platform. 

“Supporting the development of chembid is an intelligent way to develop our e-commerce activities further and reach a broader  customer base,” said Henrik Hahn, chief digital officer of Evonik.  

“OneTwoChem taught us much about digital customer experience,  which is the quality of the online interactions that a customer has  with our brand. We are happy to bring in our expertise in this area,” Hahn said.