Financing round Next strategy change for former Corona app Luca
The Luca app became famous during the Corona period when it enabled contact tracing. After the pandemic, it was to be converted into a payment app
© Lobeca / IMAGO
After the pandemic, the Corona app Luca wanted to reinvent itself as a payment service. But the start was bumpy. Now a real estate company has indirectly got involved – again with a new plan
New money for one of the best-known apps in Germany: The Stuttgart-based company Culture4life, which operates the former Corona contact app Luca, has gained a new investor. This is evident from documents in the commercial register. The financier is “Panopano Limited”, the company registered in Cyprus is a subsidiary of the listed real estate group Aroundtown, which is currently worth around three billion euros.
As part of a capital increase at the beginning of May, Panopano Limited secured a minority stake of around ten percent in the Luca app. The makers have not yet publicly communicated the financing round. However, a spokeswoman confirmed the investment upon request, without giving details of the amount. The deal makes Aroundtown one of Luca’s largest shareholders.
A liberation after a botched restart?
The cash injection could be a liberating blow for the Luca app after the botched restart. Co-founder Patrick Hennig initially developed the application for contact tracing during the coronavirus pandemic, and it was downloaded around 40 million times. However, after the end of contact restrictions in 2022, the app quickly lost importance.
Hennig and his team therefore changed their strategy: They converted Luca into a payment app, while restaurateurs were to continue to act as partners. Investors provided another 40 million euros in capital for the project. But the restart fell short of expectations despite the marketing battle, as Finance Forward reported at the end of 2022.
Luca app aims to open up hotels
The number of restaurants at the time was 150 – instead of the 9,200 planned according to an internal presentation. Currently, more than 1,000 restaurants have “activated” the app, the company says. The number of monthly downloads (see graphic) is also estimated to be well below the level of the Corona years.
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The Stuttgart-based company could really use new growth impulses. Hopes are apparently also resting on businesses outside of restaurants, a spokeswoman added. Since the end of last year, time-consuming processes in hotels have increasingly been digitized with the help of the Luca app, “such as paying in the hotel bar or checking in.”
The new investor could now open the necessary doors. Aroundtown claims to have one of the largest portfolios of commercial real estate in Germany, with a good fifth of this being hotels, including Hilton hotels in Berlin and London.
This text first appeared in Finance Forward, the magazine for the new financial world, which is produced in cooperation between Capital and OMR.
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