The week in Italian startups - Issue #59
The Money
Miscusi, a restaurant chain offering a fresh-pasta menu, 🇮🇹raised €20m in a round led by Milano Investment Partners and participated by Kitchen Fund.
Endostart, a startup developing an improved colonoscopy platform, 🇮🇹 raised €8.2m from Progress Tech Transfer, Panakes, Eureka! Ventures, LIFTT, and others.
Pets will receive their fair share of fresh food: Dog Heroes, a startup producing and delivering fresh food for dogs, 🇮🇹raised a €1m round, partly in a crowdfunding campaign and partly by a syndicate of investors.
Speaking of specialty food chains, Frankly Bubble Tea 🇮🇹announced the closing of a €1m round to open new stores.
DriveSec, a cybersecurity startup focused on the automotive sector, 🇮🇹 raised €400k from LIFTT.
Banca Etica, an Italian bank focused on ethical finance, announced its decision to invest €250k in SardexPay, a commercial credit startup, joining the crowdfunding campaign currently underway. (disclaimer: SardexPay is part of Primo Ventures' portfolio).
Liquidity Events
Etsy acquired P2P social shopping app Depop for $1.6bn, mostly in cash. Depop was first launched in Italy in 2011, incubated by H-Farm, before moving to the UK a year later. The Italian origin of Depop, which has no operations in Italy, spurred a debate on national social networks between those cheering for an "Italian success" and those commenting there is not much Italy in Depop (not even investors, excluding H-Farm and not considering that Balderton's partner in charge of the deal was in fact Roberto Bonazinga).
SECO [IOT.MI], a company specialized in IoT that in May listed its stock on the Italian Stock Exchange, announced the acquisition of US-based Oro Networks, an AI-solutions company. Terms undisclosed.
Advice Group, a martech company, 🇮🇹 announced the acquisition of Leevia, a platform to organize online contests. Terms undisclosed.
Golee, a startup developing a management platform for sports clubs, 🇮🇹 announced the acquisition of Ticket Trust, an e-ticketing startup.
🇮🇹Dedalus Group, a healthcare software solutions provider, acquired 🇩🇪Dosing GmbH, a provider of digitized Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) medication safety solutions.
CVC is acquiring a majority stake in Italy's consultancy firm BIP from Apax Partners. The deal values the company €720m.
The consolidation of the Italian banking and insurance market continues: Generali is bidding to acquire Cattolica with a €1.17Bn offer.
Italian eCommerce
The Osservatorio eCommerce B2c Netcomm published its latest report about the Italian eCommerce, reporting a whopping +45% growth in 2020 (reaching 9% of total retail sales) and expecting a +18% growth in 2021, reaching €30bn in GMV.
Italy lands in Silicon Valley
The Italian Foreign Minister 🇮🇹 announced the opening of the first Italian Innovation and Culture Hub (Iich), which will be based in North Beach, San Francisco.
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
The Enea Tech story is still evolving. Many in the Italian startup scene are not giving up on the government's decision to overhaul the mission of the Foundation (see issue #57). 🇮🇹 A group prepared an open letter and a petition to the Italian government, with the goal to preserve at least a portion of the capital for the Foundation's original mission. You can signup for the petition from the link above.
That's it for this issue, enjoy your week!
Stay safe,
N.