The week in Italian startups - Issue #37
The week in Italian startups - Issue #37
The money
Starting Finance, a financial education startup, 🇮🇹raised €625k from Atypical Partner, a "digital asset management" platform with €1.2Bn AUM.
Italmobiliare, an investment holding with €1.6Bn AUM, 🇮🇹 acquired 60% of CallMeWine, a wine e-commerce startup, in a €13M transaction including both a share purchase and the injection of fresh capital. This is definitely the year of wine & spirits startups (Tannico was acquired by Campari Group last summer)🍷
New funds & New people
Alberto Bombassei, Angelo Radici, and Piero Persico, long-time entrepreneurs, 🇮🇹 launched Cysero, a new cyber-security & robotics investment fund, managed by AVM Gestioni. The fund aims to raise €100M. The three entrepreneurs committed the first €15M.
ENEA Tech, the recently created tech-transfer foundation that we met a few weeks ago on this newsletter, 🇮🇹 announced its management team: Stefano Bernardi will lead green, energy, and circular economy investments; Chiara Giovenzana will focus on healthcare; Alessandro Aresu will focus on deep tech. Salvo Mizzi, the managing director of ENEA Tech, will manage ICT investments ad interim.
Italians deliver it better?
A group of Italian startups active in the food & delivery market 🇮🇹 joined forces to create Giusta, a "sustainable and fair" food delivery service. The idea aims at offering a low-fee service to restaurants (<15% fee), guaranteeing transparency to consumers and fairness to riders. The project is currently being tested in Rome.
PNI Cube
I usually do not talk about startup competitions (there are too many 😊), but the PNI (Premio Nazionale per l’Innovazione) is the most important Italian competition aimed at startups emerging from university research.
Startups come from regional competitions involving the major universities and compete in four categories: ICT, Life Sciences, Industrial, Cleantech.
This year, the four winners were: AgroMateriae (Cleantech, a circular economy startup aimed at transforming waste from the food industry into raw materials for the plastics industry), Eye4Nir (Industrial, an extremely cost-efficient near-infrared camera for mobile phones), SAMS Technology (ICT, a blockchain-based package tracking platform for the pharmaceuticals sector), U-Care (Life Sciences, an early diagnostic service for kidney conditions).
The State of European Tech 2020
Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you have probably heard of the release of Atomico's most awaited yearly report. In case you haven't yet, you can read the report from here:
The most comprehensive data-driven analysis of European Tech
Ending note
The week was especially slow, not least because of a national holiday on December the 8th. Nonetheless, I expect a couple of hectic weeks before Christmas, so stay tuned for news ahead.
Thank you to all the readers who took the time to send feedback and comments last week.
Stay safe!
cheers,
Nico
