The week in Italian startups - Issue #50
The Money
Elaisian, an agri-tech startup,🇮🇹 raised €1m in a syndicated round.
HiNelson, an e-commerce startup for the nautical sector,🇮🇹 raised €1m in an angel round.
Gellify and Azimut Digitech Fund 🇮🇹 invested in Startupbootcamp Fashiontech, a fashion B2B accelerator.
New funds
The Techshop, an early-stage investment fund, 🇮🇹 was announced by its founders with the goal to raise €50m.
Strategic deals
TeamSystem 🇮🇹 acquired a minority stake in Ciaomanager, a cloud PMS, and exercised an option to acquire 60% of Habble, a telecom expense management company.
Belgium-based UnifiedPost (ENXTBR:UPG) announced the acquisition of Spanish-based Sistema Efactura SL and Milan-based Digithera srl, an electronic invoicing platform provider.
PHSE, a healthcare logistics company, 🇮🇹 announced the acquisition of TEK Freight, a British ground transportation company specializing in pharmaceuticals.
Xpansiv acquired Milan- and London-based OTX, a market-access provider for Compulsory Stockholding Obligations (CSO).
☕️ De'Longhi acquired 100% of Eversys, a Swiss-based espresso machine maker, valuing the company $160m.
Treccani Scuola, a subsidiary of the renowned maker of the Treccani Encyclopedia, 🇮🇹 acquired Impactscool, an education community.
Remember Leonardo and its decision to IPO a subsidiary? They decided to cancel the listing since there was not enough interest from the market.
Generali Group and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti 🇮🇹 agreed to create a joint venture to support the elderly. I wonder if this might be an opportunity for startups offering patient-care solutions?
The Italian Legaltech map
Last week I shared the Italian Martech landscape. This week I'm happy to share the Italian legaltech map, created by the team at the LegalTech forum.
If you are working on a landscape regarding some vertical market in Italy, please let me know!
Italian Agri-tech
Last week I stumbled across two apparently contradictory articles:
🇮🇹 ENPAIA announced investing an aggregate of €15m in three different venture funds (LVenture, Eureka, and Cysero). ENPAIA is the pension fund for the workers in the agricultural sector. This announcement is good news, as Italian pension funds are still reluctant to invest in VC. ENPAIA acknowledges the importance of diversifying its holdings, at the same time supporting investors who will invest in agriculture. A classic win-win decision.
2) Peter Kruger, managing partner of AgFood Ventures, 🇮🇹 published an opinion talking about how little capital has been raised by Italian agri-tech startups in recent times, despite the importance of the sector for our market, and about the relatively small allocation dedicated to agritech in the Italian recovery plan for the next-generation EU funds.
Nothing new here: the Italian VC market is still in its infancy, resulting in many undercapitalized startups. The decision of an LP such as ENPAIA is an important signal that hopefully will pave the way for more systemic LPs and investors.
Blockchain news
SIAE, the Italian copyright collecting agency, is transitioning to an open, blockchain-based version of its services. Last week, 🇮🇹 it announced that it created more than 4m non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Algorand blockchain, representing the rights of 95k authors.
Azimut, an asset manager that is betting heavily on the digital sector, announced the launch of a security token ("AZIM") that, according to some sources, was used to tokenize a $6m loan portfolio originated by BorsaDelCredito. The token was created in partnership with Sygnum, a digital asset bank. Azimut also announced the launch of a crypto/fintech venture capital fund.
Video of the week
Legendary VC Doug Leone (managing partner at Sequoia Capital) was featured in a long interview with the Oxford Guild. Highly recommended video.
Ending notes
Thank you to the readers who came back with feedback and ideas for the "Jobs in Italian Startups" idea. I'll get back with an MVP after the Easter break. Feel free to drop a few lines if you have any more comments or if you are up for a chat.
Have a great week,
N.
