The week in Italian startups - Issue #57
The Money
HAT Sgr, a private equity investor, joined a syndicate of investors in a $130m investment in Huma, a digital healthcare services provider.
Giano Capital, a secondaries / late-stage investment vehicle, participated in a GBP60m investment in Lyst, a London-based fashion shopping platform.
Zanichelli Venture led a $1m investment in Foundry College, a San Francisco-based digital college for adults.
Liftt and Club Degli Investitori participated in a $3.6m round in Electra Vehicles, a Boston-based startup that pledged to open a branch in Turin to develop an electric supercar.
Nibol, a workspace management and desk booking startup, 🇮🇹 raised €500k from a syndicate of investors.
My Cooking Box, a startup selling boxes with the ingredients and recipes to cook Italian dishes, 🇮🇹raised €2m from Ponti, an Italian food brand.
Slowit, a travel startup offering bike tours, 🇮🇹 raised €250k from a group of angel investors.
VRMedia, a virtual collaboration startup,🇮🇹 raised €2.2m from Fondo per la Ricerca e L'innovazione.
Nexi
Nexi [NEXI.MI] is again on the market: this time it is reported to be talking to Alpha Bank about acquiring a stake in the Greek bank.
Enea Tech
I talked several times about Enea Tech, the foundation created by the Italian government with €500m under management to invest in deep tech, health, climate, and ICT startups.
Well, 🇮🇹 according to the news (and to a leaked draft of the law proposal), our government is proposing to modify the mission of the foundation.
In the revised proposal, at least €200m would be destined for investments in life sciences, including the development of vaccines. The foundation would change its name to Enea Biomedical Tech.
It is not clear what would happen with the current organization (that has just started operations).
😵💫
REVO SPAC
Revo, an Italian SPAC, has successfully raised €220m in its (oversubscribed) IPO.
The managers want to merge with an insurtech company focused on specialty products for SMEs and then build a European platform from there.
Also, as they state on their website, "by adopting blockchain technology". If you run an insurtech startup related to the SMEs segment with a blockchain-based technology, then you know whom to call 😉
Italian Fintech in review
Fintastico and Dealroom published an ecosystem map of fintech in Italy. 🇮🇹In the accompanying article, the Fintastico team draws some conclusions about the Italian market: investments in fintech are growing but not as much as desirable, while adoption of fintech services by Italian consumers and enterprises has increased rapidly in 2020 (unsurprisingly). Will increased demand drive more investments?
Goodbye capital gain tax?
Well, not really, but it appears that 🇮🇹 the Italian government is about to remove the capital gain tax for angel investors that maintain their stake in a startup for at least three years. The capital gain tax is currently at 26%.
Reading this week
An interesting analysis of the hiring patterns of selected high-flying startups after they raised their Series A.
Jobs in Italian startups
You can explore 🔍 open positions here. Feel free to share the link with your contacts.
You are welcome to add new open positions using this form 📥 . Or, forward the link to your CEO or HR person - the more open positions, the more relevant the list, the more it will travel across the web, the more candidates will see it. Thank you! 🙏🏻
Ending Notes
This is all for this issue.
Thank you to all who sent links and contacts of Italian startups developing open source products. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Have a great week,
N.
