NYSE-listed Cazoo Group, an e-commerce platform for cars that in August 2021 carried on a business combination with the Spac AJAX I and earlier this year acquired Italian competitor brumbrum for 80 million euros, announced the closure of all the subsidiaries based in continental Europe for focusing on UK business (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Cazoo said that such a strategy will allow the company to save 100 million GBP by the end of 2023. Cazoo will also close its activities in Germany and Spain while it is currently negotiating with its employees in France and in Italy. In 1H22, Cazoo generated sales of 628 million GBP (+153% from 1H21). The European activities made only 10% of such amount.
BlackSheep MadTech Fund (fka Blacksheep Ventures), an investor in digital marketing and advertising that Umberto Bottesini heads, poured 2 million euros in Connected-Stories, a platform for managing video adverts with the support of a proprietary AI-based system (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Eureka! Venture sgr, an asset management company that ceo Stefano Peroncini heads, manages BlackSheep. Claudio and Tommaso Vaccarella founded New York-based Connected-Stories in 2016
Yapily, a British open banking platform that Goldman Sachs alumnus Stefano Vaccino founded and that earlier in May acquired German competitor FinAPI, attracted the interest of JPMorgan (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Talks are in their early stage. In 2021 Yapily attracted 51 million US Dollars from Sapphire Ventures, Lakestar (an investor in Skype, Spotify, AirBnB, Facebook and Revolut), HV Capital, and Latitude.
LIFFT, the Italian holding that invests in high tech and deep tech startups, poured 0.5 million euros in Aria Sensing, an Italian producer of sensors that will invest such proceeds in manufacturing further energy-saving devices with an innovative design and technology (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Turin Polytechnic University and Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo founded LIFFT which attracted the resources of 148 investors including Azimut, Fondazioni LINKS, Compagnia di San Paolo, and CRT. LIFFT has resources of 45.4 million euros and aims to attract more than 90 million by 2024.
ProntoPro, a marketplace for professionals and artisans, announced its merger with Turkey’s competitor Armut(see here a previous post by BeBeez). The new entity will be active in 14 countries and receive a further boost from a 15 million euros investment round that the current investors of both firms will pour once completed the merger, sources said to BeBeez. ProntoPro belongs to immobiliare.it (87%) and other minority shareholders. Since its foundation in 2014, Armut raised 6.2 million US Dollars from AddVenture and HummingBird Ventures. Ogliengo and Wang founded ProntoPro in 2015. The company has sales of 4.8 million euros, operative losses in the region of 4.8 million and net cash of 2.6 million.
CDP Venture Capital sgr and BPER Banca signed an industrial partnership worth 12.4 million euros for creating Gility, a digital platform for training HRs of SMEs (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Gility is an even joint venture of Boost Innovation, the corporate venture builder that CDP Venture Capital launched in November 2020, and BPER Banca.
