GMX founders Karsten Schramm, Peter Köhnkow, and Eric Dolatre wanted to offer a secure alternative to WhatsApp—encrypted and compliant with data protection regulations. Now their company, Brabbler, has had to file for bankruptcy. The messenger service Ginlo will be discontinued at the end of the year.
Ginlo was intended to enable private users, companies, and government agencies to exchange fully encrypted and GDPR-compliant messages. The signs seemed to point to success: The Stiefel family, co-founders of Media Markt, invested €15 million in Brabbler in July 2017. In March of this year, the Munich-based startup acquired the News service Simsme from Deutsche Post. In return, the former state-owned company became a shareholder in Babbler a.
Pilot projects with the City of Munich
Brabbler also had a foot in the door in public administration. The City of Munich completed its first Pilot projects with the messenger Ginlo and used it in the state elections in 2018 and the European elections in May of this year.
The Munich District Administration Department planned a large-scale deployment of Ginlo, and the entire field service of the Munich traffic control department was also to use the smartphone messenger by the end of 2019.
Ginlo users can still back up data until the end of the year
That's not going to happen now. As Brabbler states on its website, it was unable to secure further financing. On October 31, 2019, the Munich District Court opened insolvency proceedings. The messenger apps Ginlo and Ginlo Business will be discontinued at the end of December 2019. Users still have the opportunity to back up their data until then. Various functions of the service, as well as support, are already no longer available. Nevertheless, after four years of operation, Brabbler draws a positive conclusion:
"The Ginlo community has received a lot of support from interested parties, users, and customers in recent months. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for their trust. This shows us how important privacy and confidentiality are in today's digital world."
