TWIS #171

New rounds for Sidereus, Evja, Cellply, and others. Acquisitions for Enovis, Jakala, and ToolsGroup. Roberto Marsella is the best Italian business angel in 2023.

Hello,

Welcome back to The Week in Italian Startups. This is Niccolò from Primo Ventures: every week, I publish my curated list of the latest news from the Italian startup ecosystem.

The Money

• Sidereus Space Dynamics, a company based in Salerno, Italy, raised €5.1m in Seed+ funding. The funding round was led by Primo Space and CDP Venture Capital Sgr, via the Italia Venture II – Fondo Imprese Sud fund.

• Evja, an agritech startup, 🇮🇹raised €4.2m in a pre-Series A round. The funding was led by CDP Venture Capital sgr through Italia Venture II and SEFEA Impact sgr.

• Cellply, a life sciences startup, raised €3.6m from Recomec, LIFTT, and Schia Ventures.

• BeSafe Group 🇮🇹closed a Series A round of €3m, led by PranaVentures and Azimut Libera Impresa, on behalf of the Azimut Digitech Fund. The round also included CDP Venture Capital SGR and strategic business angels.

• PandasAI raised $1.1m in a Pre-Seed round, with funding from Runa Capital, London-based Episode1, and Vento, the Italian arm of Exor Ventures.

• Inflead, an influencer marketing intelligence platform, 🇮🇹raised €1m from Blacksheep.

M&A

• Enovis to buy surgical implants maker LimaCorporate for €800m.

• Jakala acquired Roibox.

• ToolsGroup 🇮🇹acquired Evo.

Reading this week

• Italy Startup Ecosystem Report 2023.

• Runa Capital 🇮🇹opens an office in Italy.

• Tech scaleup Italy.

• Roberto Marsella 🇮🇹was elected best business angel in Italy in 2023.

• B2B marketplace opportunities in Italy.

• A profile of Timeflow.

• AI ethics with Raffaele Mauro 🇮🇹(video).

• An 🇮🇹interview with Luca Cartechini (ShopCircle).

• Leonardo SpA and Cubbit entered into a partnership for an ultra-secure cloud.

• Battery’s State of Enterprise tech spending, September 2023.

🌟Jobs in Italian Startups🌟

If you want to have one or more job positions relevant to the Italian ecosystem listed, fill out this form. As soon as I approve the position it will remain visible for 30 days at this link.

Latest positions:

• Internship – Investment Analyst with STEM background at Primo Ventures.

• Elearning Specialist at Data Masters.

Startup Events in Italy🎪

The events that are animating the Italian ecosystem: feel free to add an event through this form. All events will be visible at this link and I’ll list them below.

The following events are welcome:

• Demo days

• Calls for startups

• Startup fairs, events

Latest events:

• Bologna StartUp Day (6/10/2023)

• Forest Valley Sandbox Demo Day (19/10/2023)

Fundraising Tracker

Ending Notes

Giacomo Mollo and I comment weekly on the latest news: subscribe to our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, and other platforms to get additional insights on what is happening in the Italian ecosystem.

Have a great week,

N.