AIFI, the Italian association of private equity, venture capital and private debt funds, asked the Italian Government to support the private capital investors to allow them to boost the mid-market companies (see here a previous post by BeBeez). AIFI is also supporting the action of Invest Europe, a European association of private capital investors. Anna Gervasoni previously said to BeBeez that AIFI, of which she is the coo, was drafting the suggested guidelines for the Italian Government for incentivising the sector and and boost the Italian real economy without additional costs. Aifi asked to strenghten further the activity of the 1 billion euros fund of venture funds Fondo Nazionale Innovazione(FNI) and to pour further 200 million in it. Furthermore, Mise should launch a new fund of technology transfer on the ground of the positive outcome of ITAtech and support the Italian innovative startups with a guarantee fund. Enrico Resmini, the ceo of FNI, joined AIFI’s board (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Earlier in December 2019, Resmini said that the company was going to launch a 200 million fund of venture funds, a fund for corporate venture capital, and a tech transfer fund. Francesca Bria is the president of FNI.
The weekly Invest in Italy Index (III) of Skillroom and BeBeez said that between 23 and 29 March (Monday to Sunday) the topic “invest in italy” on the social network catalysed much less attention than the previous days (see here the Report and here a previous post by BeBeez). The index is an artificial intelligence-based tracker of the sentiment of institutional investors about Italian equity and debt of listed and private companies and the real estate sector. The Negative sentiment almost halved (130 mentions from 248 mentions the week before), while the positive sentiment went down to almost 9% (252 mentions from previous 271) and the neutral sentiment rose by almost 28% (55 mentions from 43). Investors have still doubts about the Italian economic recovery (see Beez Peak of 30 March). Skillroom is an innovative startup born in 2017 and operating in the fields of machine learning out of the big data, natural language processing (NLP), and of minority and unwritten languages. For a test analysis, click here or click here for information.
Fabrick, the open banking platform of Banca Sella, launched a videocommunication tool together with Bandyer, a TMT scaleup (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The new digital channel allows financial services firms and corporates to liaise with their clients. In January 2017, Filippo Rocca, Simone Mazzoni, and Francesco Durighetto founded Milan-based Bandyer, which is part of Fabrick ecosystem. Dario Frigerio, a top manager of Unicredit has 1.1% of the company. Bandyer also raised a total amount of 3.2 million euros from several investors, including Intesa Sanpaolo.
Italian seasoned banker Roberto Nicastro changed Pbi, previously aimed at investing in startups, into a fintech lender for companies with a turnover of up to 10 million euros (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Nicastro already received investment commitments for 45 million from Assicurazioni Generali, Gruppo Sella, the Fürstenberg Family, Isa Institute, the family offices Micheli, Lunelli, Albertini, Troiani, and Confartigianato. Nicastro has 37.6% of PBI, Federico Sforza (head of multichannel direct bank Italy at Unicredit) owns 36.8%. Further shareholders of the company are Alessio Marras, Francesca Lauro, Federico Provinciali, Stefano Gallotti, and Andrea Correale.
Crif, the Italian provider of credit and business information services, acquired US digital banking firm Strands (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Such a transaction will lead to the creation of a global provider for digital banking solutions and access to account, said Carlo Gherardi, the ceo of Crif. Earlier in February, Crif raised to 100% its holding in Inventia, an Italian biometric company. Crif owns 10% of invoice trading platform Workinvoice since September 2018.
Greeneria, a platform for green economy players, and Letsell, an Italian scaleup that creates e-commerce websites, launched the first free Italian online franchising (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The first 20 candidates will open for free an e-shop with the brand Greeneria and receive a 10% – 20% commission for each sale. Andrea Gandiglio, the publisher and editor of Greengrass, founded Greeneria in 2013. Luca Ferrero, Carlo Tafuri, and Michele Contrini founded Letsell in 2017 Brandsdistribution.com, an online BDB distributor of fashion items that belongs to Tafuri, invested in Letsell, which had an enterprise value of one million euros in its seed phase. Brandsdistribution also supported Skinlabo. In May 2019, Letsell raised 0.75 million.
Bloovery, an online platform for the wholesale of flowers, launched an equity crowdfunding campaign of 100k euros on Mamacrowd (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The fundraising target is of 300k euros with an investment ticket of 499,67 euros and a pre-money value of 2 millions. LVenture invested in Bloovery, a company that Simone Guzzetti (ceo) and Michele Dondi (cmo) founded in 2018. In Its first 18 months of activity, the company posted sales of 0.32 million.
Eureka! Venture signed a partnership with Materias for investiing in startups in the field of advanced materials (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Eureka will co-invest in the tech transfer initiatives that Materias will submit. The two companies will carri on together the scouting of potential target. Luigi Amati is the ceo of Eureka, while Luigi Nicolais is the chairman of Materias. Eureka belongs to Stefano Peroncini (40%), Salvatore Majorana (20%), Anna Amati (20%), and Meta Group (20%) and has resources of 30 million euros ahead of a fundraising target of 50 million. ITATech, which has the support of Cdp and the European Investment Fund, poured resources in Eureka, which also received the support of InnovFin Equity and of European Fund for Strategic Investments.
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