Dr Ekkehard Franzke

Dr. Ekkehard Franzke is a German consultant, private-equity investor and angel with a career spanning more than 30 years across management consulting, private equity and venture capital in Europe. He holds an MA in Economics from the University of Regensburg and earned a PhD in Economics with highest distinction from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, with additional graduate studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He began his career as a management consultant at Kearney (A.T. Kearney) in the late 1980s.

In the mid-1990s he joined Bain & Company in Germany, where he created and ran the firm's Private Equity and M&A practice and managed its EU Partner Co-Investment vehicle. During the dot-com era he initiated and led "bainlab," Bain & Company's digital startup accelerator — the point at which he also became an active angel investor. In 2003 he founded his own buyout fund, Ingenium, applying his large-cap and digital experience to the German-speaking (DACH) mid-cap market; Ingenium is based in Munich.

In October 2005 he returned to consulting as Partner and Managing Director at L.E.K. Consulting, and after its management buyout he rejoined Kearney as a Partner from 2009 until 2019, primarily serving private-equity clients. Alongside this, he co-founded Cellact, a pharmaceutical startup that was sold to Mundipharma in 2017. Since 2019 he has served as a Limited Partner and Strategic Advisor to Eudemian Ventures, sitting on its Strategic Advisory Committee and advising portfolio companies on market analysis and strategic positioning.

• Invests at the seed / pre-seed stage as an angel, drawing on a private-equity and consulting lens (market analysis, strategic positioning, value creation).
• Backs technology and software/SaaS startups, with additional credibility in pharma/life sciences from co-founding and exiting Cellact.
• Through Ingenium Capital, focuses on mid-cap buyouts in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) — a separate, later-stage mandate from his angel activity.
• As a Eudemian Ventures advisor, contributes "expertise in market analysis and strategic positioning for portfolio companies," signaling that operational/strategic value-add — not just capital — is central to how he engages.