The week in Italian startups - Issue #10

The Money

• Milkman, a logistics service offering same-day delivery based in Milan, raised Eur 25M from a group of Italian VCs including P101, Vertis SGR and 360 Capital Partners. Poste Italiane also participated in the round. The company raised a total of Eur 35M so far.

• AppQuality, a crowdtesting service for mobile apps, raised Eur 3M from a syndicate of investors including P101, ITA500 and angels.

• Datrix raised Eur 2.3M in a round led by United Ventures (already an existing shareholder in the company), joined by Nerio Alessandri’s Wellness Holding. Datrix offers "augmented analytics" services to business customers.

• Punchlab, a startup developing a mobile app for combat sports training, raised 300K in a seed round led by Primomiglio SGR. The app is already distributed worldwide, showing a strong initial traction in the USA.

M&A deals of the week

• Shopfully (better known in Italy for the DoveConviene brand) acquired Promoqui to create a digital hub for in-store shopping. The combined entity would reach 2 out of 3 families in Italy with its line of products. Acquisition terms where undisclosed.

• Accenture continues its acquisition spree in Italy, this time acquiring PLM Systems, a Turin-based boutique system integrator. This is the second acquisition announced in a few weeks.

• Standard Cognition, a San Francisco-based autonomous retail startup, acquired Milan-based Checkout Technologies. Terms undisclosed.

Events this week

29 VCs from Italy, Portugal and Spain got together on Wednesday 20/5 as judges in the SESTARS2020 competition, aimed at startups from Southern Europe. The winners were:

• Kotokan (spain) in the B2C session

• Keyless (Italy) in the B2B session

• Virtuleap (Portugal) in the Healthtech session

Participation was strong (200 applications), and Google, Microsoft Amazon and IBM offered 500K worth of prizes to the winners.

David Alonso Martinez from Samaipata offers the complete recap of the event.

Readings this week

• Since the crisis is far from over (the recent announcement about Hertz entering chapter 11 might be just the tip of the iceberg), I believe it is sensible to continue sharing useful advice about navigating a crisis for startups. In the post below Matthew Cowan shares some areas to focus on to improve resiliency for your startup

Final notes

Another week is over. The Italian government has (partially) re-opened the country a couple of week ago, and we are trying to navigate through this current "new normal". As usual, feel free to hit "reply" if you want to comment on this week events or share news and updates from your side.

Stay safe,

N.