Engineering specialist in-tech is targeting growth: The company intends to become a leading provider of digitization for the automotive and industrial sectors. The firm from Garching, Germany has identified a strong investor to make that growth possible: Chinese firm BDStar, which on Friday announced the acquisition of a 50% stake in in-tech.

The management team and organizational structures at in-tech are unaffected by the change: Founders and managing partners Bastian Friedrich and Christian Wagner will retain their roles, leading a proven management team with a continued mandate to make all key decisions.

“We want to see in-tech continue to grow successfully in Europe and the US,” Bastian Friedrich explains. The investment by BDStar will allow in-tech to grow its global revenues by a factor of five in the next five years, to roughly 500 million euros.

“We are predicting sustained growth, both organically and in guided directions,” Friedrich promises. The founding duo also intends to invest in new products and technological know-how.

Solutions provider at the junction between engineering and software
in-tech intends to establish itself as a solutions provider at the junction between engineering and software, working in key areas such as autonomous driving, electro-mobility and industry 4.0.

“Our customers are going to be focused on the mega-trends of autonomous driving and electromobility in the coming years. Anyone hoping to support them will need to provide engineering skills with software know-how,” Christian Wagner explains.

The company is thus building on its position as a provider of software solutions in the automotive field. The internal software development team is expected to grow from its current headcount of 150 to roughly 500 employees in the next three years.

As experts in intelligent securing of vehicle functions, the company already offers hardware and software solutions such as its innovative HiL system and patented orangeSwitch to optimize test bench loads. in-tech is also working on products and services for the Industry 4.0 area, including mobile monitoring of production facilities.

“We’ll be working together with BDStar to invest more heavily in those solutions,” says Christian Wagner. “The goal is to provide our customers with even more innovative products and services related to digitization.”

About BDStar
BDStar is a leading provider of hardware and industrial applications for satellite navigation and positioning. The Beijing-based company was one of the co-developers of the BDS satellite navigation system and has established a reputation as a specialist in positioning solutions.

Beyond its own hardware production, BDStar also offers complex and innovative services in the field of satellite navigation — such as for example the networking of fishing fleets, earthquake prediction and control of fully automated container ports. A dedicated automotive development center in Shanghai is focused on navigation and infotainment systems for the automotive field.

Continued growth under proven leadership
“BDStar Founder Ruxin Zhou’s background as a corporate founder is similar to Bastian Friedrich and myself,” Christian Wagner says. “We became acquainted over the course of a shared project and immediately understood that we had the same goals.”

Zhou, himself an engineer, founded BDStar in 2000, successfully growing it to its current size of roughly 2,600 employees. The Chinese firm now hopes to invest in new technologies for the European market.

in-tech is a crucial first step in this direction: With a proven management team and an established brand, in-tech is an excellent vehicle for growth and expansion into a successful international technology firm.