Italian venture capital and angel investors keep the heat on for deals and involve international buyers for divestitures.
Mapadore, the artificial intelligence startup that provides support for sales processes, raised 0.5 million of euros through a capital increase and 0.5 million through debt instruments (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Milan based business accelerator Nuvolab, led the financing for the company that Fabrizio Bosio and Francesco Inguscio founded and now want to expand into foreign markets. Strategic and IT consulting firm Gartner, included Mapadore in its list of “Cool Vendors in CRM Sales 2018”, and suggested it as one of the three top artificial intelligence solutions in support of sales.
Soulkitchen.bio, an Italian producer of semi-finished and ready meals for Horeca clients, raised through a Round A financing (see here a previous post by BeBeez), which was announced some days ago without telling the size of the round. Andrea Cova and Matteo Minardi, who founded the company in 2016, will invest these resources in expanding the business abroad. IPGest, a venture capital firm that belongs to Innogest, Tan Food, MM Real Estate, Mattia Monti, and Andrea Torlonia subscribed such financing. IPGest is an investor active since 2013 that has resources worth 40.9 million that the Italian Ministry for Economic Development financed with 20 million together with private individuals. IPGest acquires minorities or majorities or provides quasi-equity instruments to innovative SMEs.
Italian business incubator M31 Italia sold Adaptica to an undisclosed Chinese ophthalmologic company (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The Italian startup, a spin-off of Padua University, produces items for diagnosing and curing refraction mistakes and sights faults. Tommaso Occhipinti founded Adaptica in 2009, while Gianluigi Meneghini acted as ceo. Ruggero Frezza founded and chaired M31, and last year divested CenterVue, another ophthalmologic company, while D-Eye is still part of the firm’s portfolio. D-Eye provides artificial intelligence solutions to ophthalmology and in January 2016 raised 1.5 million of euros from Italian venture capital firms Innogest and Invitalia Venture.
