The weekly Invest in Italy Index of Skillroom and BeBeez tracked on the web a negative sentiment of international investors for Italy between 24 April and 3 May, Friday and Sunday (see here a previous post by BeBeez). This is mainly due to the 29 April, Wednesday, decision of Fitch Ratings to downgrade the Italian sovereign debt from BBB to BBB –, the last end of the investment grade, with stable outlook. On 24 April, S&P confirmed for Italy a BBB rating with negative outlook. However, the sentiment tracked on the web is improving as Moody’s and DBRS confirmed for Italy a Baa3 (with stable outlook) and a BBB (with negative outlook from stable). The “invest in italy” topics on the web and on the social networks for the week ending on 3 May amounted to1637 mentions (1000 negative) that more than 25 million people read. Twitter and social media had a relevant role for spreading a negative sentiment. III outlined two reports this week: one considering only the mentions on the web and another analysing only the mentions on the social network. The latter says that the balance between positive and negative sentiment is the same as of previous weeks. Positive mentions outnumbered the negative (285 vs 44, with 42 neutral). However, some of the negative mentions had a stronger impact. Negative mentions on the social networks were the overwhelming majority (955 vs 95 positive and 35 neutral). Click here for a test analysis or for information.
Earlier in March, iGenius, a developer of artificial intelligence based software for business intelligence, raised 11 million US Dollars from business angels (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The company received an aggregated amount of 20 million US Dollars from business angels. In April 2018, the company raised 7 million euros. Ceo Uljan Sharka founded iGenius in January 2016. The company has a proprietary augmented analytics technology that supports users for its decision-making processes through a data driven logic. In November 2019, venture capital fund Accel included iGenius in the top 100 European SaaS companies for the data & analytics cathegory. The company will invest such proceeds in supporting the business for the post-Covid-19 recovery.
inVRsion, a developer of SaaS solutions for Virtual reality (VR) B2B, raised 3 million euros (see here a previous post by BeBeez). LIFTT, whose chairman is Stefano Buono, poured 500k euros in the round. The company’s shareholders invested in the business as was as Mainardo de Nardis, part of the firm’s advisory board, did. Matteo Esposito, Paolo Pascolo, Flora Caroli, and Luca Ferrari Trecate founded inVRsion in 2015, which raised 0.4 million from Italian Angels for Growth in May 2019 and closed two seed rounds in April 2016 and December 2017. Finbeauty is one of the investors in the company which raised 4.5 million since its birth.
Fleep Technologies, raised 800k euros from Pariter Partners Syndicate, Italian Angels for Growth (IAG), Club degli Investitori, and the Cogliati Family (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Fleep Technologies was born in early 2019 upn the initiative of Giorgio Dell’Erba, Paolo Colpani and Mario Caironi who are researchers in the field of printed and molecular electronics for Milan IIT Center for Nano Science and Techology (CNST). The technology of Fleep allows to produce electronic items with sustainable and recyclable materials. Alessandro Brighenti is IAG’s Champion for this investment. Marco Salvadori represents Club degli Investitori.
Italian startup AorticLab raised 800k euros in a round led by business angels partners of Italian Angels for Growth (IAG). The latter invested 600k euros (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Club degli Investitori also poured resources in the asset. Earlier in March, Aorticlab launched on Doorway an equity crowdfunding campaign due to close on 15 June 2020. The company will invest these proceeds in the development of new products. Franco Osta (ceo), Enrico Pasquino (cso) and Marco Vola (cmo) founded AorticLab in 2017. The startup is based in the Bioindustry Park of Colleretto Giacosa (Torino).
Friulia, the financial services firm of the Friuli Venezia-Giulia Region, invested 200k euros in the equity crowdfunding campaign of Econviene, an Italia e-retailer of Italian beauty products that otherwise would be wasted (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Econviene launched such campaign on 30 April, Thursday, on Milan-listed platform CrowdFundMe with an investment ticket of at least 500 euros ahead of a 0.3 – 0.5 million fundraising target on the ground of an enterprise value of 1.6 million. The company already raised 0.252 million. Econviene will invest such proceeds in its organic development for achieving a turnover of 3.6 million in the next three years. Alberto Monico, Giuliano Filippi, and Diego Zancarini founded Econviene in 2017.
EasyTemp, a smart system for monitoring temperatures of AEBiosystem, raised 180k euros on LifeSeeder, an Italian equity crowdfunding platform with a focus on life sciences (See here a previous post by BeBeez). The fundraising target was of 90,000 euros with a post-money valuation of 3.1 million. Paolo Marini founded AEBiosystem. Cluster C.H.I.CO (Cluster of Health Innovation and Community), which belongs to the Lazio Region, founded LifeSeeder and developed Synergy, a marktplace for financial partnerships, club deals or R&D activities.
Avanzi – Sostenibilità per Azioni and Etica (part of Banca Etica) launched a|impact– Avanzi Etica SICAF EuVECA (a|impact), a venture capital for impact investing that already had raised 15 million euros from Banca Etica and further resources from Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore and other investors ahead of a target of 40 million in the next months (See here a previous post by BeBeez). The fund’s advisor is a|cube (fka Make a Cube3), a social business incubator. a|impact already invested Cooperativa Casa dello Studente, a network for students tutoring that the chairman Claudio Tanghetti founded in 2016. Valentina Zadra is the independent chairwoman of Avanzi Etica Sicaf EuVECA, while Matteo Bartolomeo is the company’s ceo and Davide Dal Maso the chairman. Ugo Biggeri is the chairman of Etica.
MatiPay, a fintech that belongs to Neva Finventures, launched Take 5, a social distancing function (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The startup was born in the IoT division of Sitael, part of Gruppo Angel, an Italian player for the sectors of railway, aerospace and aeronautics. In October 2019, Neva Finventures invested 7 million euros in MatiPay whose ceo is Matteo Pertosa.
Mansutti, an Italian insurance broker that owns insurtech Upgrape, signed a partnership with US-based subscription economy player Zuora for launching Upgrape Pay (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Upgrape Pay is a platform for buying insurance and IoT services. In July 2019, Mansutti launched Mansutti Innovation Center (MIC), an incubator for insurtech startups. In October 2017, Mansutti poured one million euros in Yolo together with Barcamper Ventures and Miro Ventures.
Italian fintech startup Propensione, a provider of supplementary pension that Giancarlo Scotti founded together with other former managers of Assicurazioni Generali and the support of Palladio Finanziaria Holding, hired Raffaele Agrusti as new board member (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Agrusti worked as top manager more than 30 years for Generali too and acted as cfo of Rai, President of Rai Way, and ceo of ITAS Mutua, for which he implemented a turnaround strategy. Further directors of the company are Dario Scrosoppi (chairman and former Chief Information Officer of Gruppo Generali); Giovanni Dembech; Giorgio Drago; Fedele Gubitosi; Simone Mocchiutti; Alfredo Scotti; Scotti; Carmen Silvestri; Angelo Venchiarutti.
Illimity Bank launched Payment Initiation Service (PIS), a tool for aggregating accounts of different banks (see here a previous post by BeBeez). PIS was born out of the collaboration between Fabrick, the open banking platform of Banca Sella, and Illimity.
Italian venture builder Mamazen launched the database “Investors in activity during the Covid-19 emergengy“ for favouring the liaison of startups with capital providers (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Angels 4 Women, Two Hundred, Club degli Investitori, VC Hub, P101, Panakes, and LVenture Group. Mamazen, whose ceo is Farhad Alessandro Mohammadi, aims to include 60-70% of the Italian startup ecosystem by the end of May 2020. Mamazen is active since September 2018.
Italian startup VGen Lab and Open Innovation Lombardia launched #RestartLombardia (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Such call aim sto suppor the open innovation for the new economic environment. VGen LAB is an Italian community driven platform for online and offline open innovation that was born in November 2019. The call aims to match the Italian companies with the new generations with a crowdsourcing tool. Gabriele Belfiore is one of the founders of VGen Lab, while Federico Nolé is the Head of Product Development.
Gimme5, the digital piggy bank for small investors’ savings that belongs to Italian asset manager AcomeA, will allow its clients to invest at least 5 euros in the alternative funds of the mother company (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Gimme5 was born in 2013 and since then it raised above 50 million euros for more than 250,000 clients. Flavio Talarico is the Head Of Product of Gimme5. Alberto Foà, Giordano Martinelli, Roberto Brasca, and Giovanni Brambilla acquired Sai Asset Management from Fondiaria Sai in 2010 and rebranded it as AcomeA.
Fondazione Golinelli and its incubator and accelerator for startups G-Factor selected 5 startups instead of 8 for Life Science Innovation 2020 award (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Applicants operate in the field of pharma, biotech, medtech, nutraceutics, bioIT, and bioengineering. The award consists in 0.720 million euros in cash and 0. 280 million in services to be equally shared among eight winners. However, since only 5 companies received the award, the univensted resources will be reinvested in the next call. Winners are Bacfarm, Lighthouse Biotec, Nib Biotec, PerFormS, and Recornea.
The Italian network of travel agencies Welcome Travel (that evenly belongs to Alpitour and Costa Crociere) and Paris-listed tmt and e-payments company Afone Participations launched online payment system WEP@y (see here a previous post by BeBeez). This tool will supply the clients of Welcome Travel a safe digital payment system.
Modefinance, the Italian fintech rating agency, signed a partnership with London’s fintech AInfinity (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The firms will launch a service that integrates the proprietary AI technology of modefinance with the analysis of sentiment and alternative data in the Raas (Rating-as-a-Service) platform of the Italian company. Valentino Pediroda and Mattia Ciprian founded Modefinance which in December 2015 sold a 43% to Corvallis (whose controlling shareholders are Antonio Santocono and Enrico Del Sole, while Alkemia – fka NEM – has 43.5%). In October 2017, Modefinance launched s-peek Team, a web and mobile platform for analysing and managing the credit risk. Since 2015, modefinance posted an annual growth of 50% and in July 2019 it signed a partnership with UK fintech Wiserfunding. In December 2019, Modefinance signed a partnership with Acp for the credit scoring (MORE by Oplon).
Milan-listed paytech Nexi signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft for the open banking sector (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Microsoft joined Nexi Open, the open banking ecosystem. Nexi and Microsoft will develop digital competences and strenghten the programme Microsoft for Startups. The two companies aim to create products and services in the field of cloud, artificial intelligence and big data for the sectors of open banking and financial services. Nexi is one of the companies that BeBeez Private Data monitors. Find out here how to subscribe to the Combo Version that includes the reports and the insight views of BeBeez News Premium 12 months for 110 euros per month.
