The TUM (Technische Universität München) start-up company Celonis is the fastest-growing technology enterprise in Germany. In recognition, the start-up has been honoured by the management consultancy Deloitte with the Technology Fast 50 Award. Celonis developed a so-called process-mining software tool to enable companies to analyse and visualize their IT-based processes, which in turn gives them better insight into their business processes, as the video below explains.
"Growth rates that leave one speechless" – that's how the business paper Handelsblatt wrote about the Technology Top 50 that were identified by Deloitte. At the top of the ranking: Celonis, with sales growth of 3951 per cent over the past four fiscal years. That makes the start-up, which employs a staff of around 60, the world market leader in the area of process mining. That is the term used to describe methods with which enterprises can evaluate data from their running business processes. It enables to better understand and then improve on-going business activities. The Celonis software analyses business processes in real time.
Software based on TUM research
Celonis was founded in 2011 by Martin Klenk, Bastian Nominacher, and Alexander Rinke – on the basis of research they had worked on as students of Informatics, Finance and Information Management, and Mathematics at TUM. Their software can be deployed in all systems and can analyze company processes in real time. The Celonis team received support from TUM's start-up consultation service and funding from an EXIST start-up grant under which the university provides a mentor and a number of workstations. It wasn't only in the start-up phase that the entrepreneurs were closely involved with the university; they are still in touch with various institutes and departments today. They are also involved in several TUM programs on entrepreneurship and career guidance, where they are also role models for students considering founding their own company.
Over 700 start-ups have been founded from TUM
For this reason, TUM presented its Presidential Entrepreneurship Award to Celonis few weeks ago. Endowed with 10,000 euros, this award is a part of TUM's entrepreneurship strategy, through which the university strives to motivate students and academics to become entrepreneurs. Together with UnternehmerTUM, the university's Center for Innovation and Business Creation, it supports new firms throughout all phases of starting up their businesses. Since 1990, more than 700 companies currently providing some 14,000 jobs have been founded from within TUM. According to the latest "Start-up Radar" published by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft – the business community's innovation agency for the German science system – TUM supports start-ups better than any other major university.
