We are happy to announce that Menara Ventures has invested in Matics, a Haifa based industry 4.0 startup developing real-time manufacturing analytics and operational intelligence helping traditional industries migrate to a new way of managing the manufacturing production floor.
Ofra Kalechstain (Co-Founder and CEO) and Elded Weiss (Co-Founder and Chairman), both accomplished entrepreneurs, have been successfully working together for many years. Their list of accomplishments includes the spin-off from Scitex of Paradigm, which they grew into a multinational technology company exclusively focused on the delivery of software solutions for the oil and gas E&P industry. Paradigm was acquired by APAX in 2012 in an all-cash $1B transaction. This venture was followed by their investment in a company providing traditional industries with consulting services focused on improving production and shop floor efficiency. After a while, they realized that everything being done manually by experienced consultants, can be done more efficiently and robustly by technology. They built a SaaS technology incorporating all the knowhow and experience they'd acquired over the years, and offered their new product under the name Matics, to their clients.
What Matics offers
Matics develops software used by factories to digitize the production process. The software combines technology and manufacturing knowhow to digitally monitor and capture the complete production journey, enabling full auditability, repeatability and knowledge capture. Designed for SMEs, this secured, cloud-based, RTOI solution enables fast, non-disruptive, modular and scalable deployment.
Why we invested in Matics
When we first met Ofra, it was clear that Matics was on a mission to build something big. They recognized the huge opportunity involved in digitization of medium sized factories in traditional industry. Speaking with some of Matics’ customers, we learned how dramatic a change Matics made for them, and how dominant it became in their daily operations. They reported production efficiency improvement of tens of percent within weeks.
During 2020, immediately after the COVID-19 outbreak, Matics turned lemons into lemonade by shifting their sales and marketing strategy. They relied on remote sales and implementation rather than their previous F2F lengthy and expensive process. Today, Matics can remotely implement their software in a new factory within 8 hours (!).
Looking at the global trend of Industry 4.0, described as the “digital transformation of manufacturing/production and related industries and value creation processes”, we understood that what we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. The transformation is still in its early stages, a realization that further spurred our decision to invest in Matics and join their team.
Additional investors in Matics include: IL Ventures (Sagol’s family fund, founders of Keter Plastic), Firstime and Leumi Partners.
We are confident that Matics is the right team, with the right product, at the right time, to become a massive business that will serve scores of customers worldwide.
