The week in Italian startups - Issue #78
The Money
Midori, a smart metering and energy consumption analytics startup, raised €1.7m in a syndicated round led by Fair Connect, Club Degli Investitori, and Club Acceleratori.
Fintech startup Step4Business 🇮🇹raised €8.5m from Azimut (the group), CRIF, and Gellify.
Herbolea, a Florence-based startup developing solvent-less products for botanical extraction, raised €5m from Oskare Capital, a medical and pharmaceutical cannabis specialist fund.
Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, a $2bn investment vehicle, announced a minority investment in CMC Machinery.
2 Billion for Italian innovation
The Italian government 🇮🇹assigned 2 billion euros to CDP Venture Capital. In 2019 the Italian state bank received €1.3Bn, that CDP has been deploying through a series of funds (in a mix of direct investments in startups and indirect investments in Italian VCs).
IPOs & Liquidations
Defence Tech, a company specializing in cybersecurity & control systems, went public on the Euronext Growth Milan (formerly known as AIM), raising €25m for an €89.4m market capitalization. At the end of the first day of trading, the stock was up +32.29%.
Alfonsino, a food delivery startup, 🇮🇹is planning to go public on the Euronext Growth Milan market, raising €5m.
The board of Vetrya SpA [VTY.MI], a digital transformation and VAS provider, decided to liquidate the company following extremely negative results in 2021.
M&A
AppQuality, a crowdsourcing platform for app testing, acquired Iterspace.
ISEO acquired a controlling stake in Sofia Locks, a cloud-native access control startup.
Hippocrates Holding, a group managing more than 250 physical pharmacies in Italy, 🇮🇹announced the acquisition of online pharma e-commerce TopFarmacia.
Italian e-commerce in 2021
Ilaria Cavalleri offers a summary of the latest research by the B2C E-commerce Observatory of Politecnico di Milano (here is a free infographic in Italian). Long story short: in 2021 e-commerce will account for 10% of retail sales, up from 9% in 2020. According to the research and somewhat anti-intuitively, COVID19 slowed the growth of online purchases rather than augment it.
A Special Edition of the Podcast
Last week Giacomo Mollo and I had the pleasure to speak with Andrea Orlando, managing director of Startup Wise Guys in Italy. We talked about SWG, the Italian startup scene, and the features of a successful ecosystem. Watch the interview below or listen to it on our usual channels (Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc..).
A selection of positions published last week on XJobs
Workinvoice is looking for a Sales Account Executive
Satispay is looking for a CRM Manager
KPI6 is looking for a Data Analyst
BrumBrum is looking for a Frontend Developer
D-Orbit is looking for a Systems Engineer
About XJobs:
The XJobs platform is a free portal listing open job positions from the Italian startup ecosystem, managed by CDP Venture Capital. If you desire, you can apply for free and have your job positions posted on the platform by following this link.
Ending Notes
Last week I forgot the link to the article regarding Castello SGR and the greenfield sold to an American data center developer: 🇮🇹here is the link, my apologies!
Join the Clubhouse conversation between Giacomo Mollo and myself, commenting on the latest news, Monday at 6:30 pm CEST. If you miss the live discussion, you can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and other podcast platforms.
Have a great week,
N.