360 Capital, an Italian-French VC with over €500 million under management, announced the first closing at €30 million of 360 Digitaly, the new fund dedicated to seed and early-stage investments in startups active in the digital transition. This fund represents a new chapter in 360 Capital’s strategy, and was created with the aim of supporting and accelerating the growth of companies and entrepreneurs in the transformation of sectors and markets that are still analog or fragmented. The project was managed in all its phases by Lucrezia Lucotti, 29, Partner of 360 Capital, supported by Investor Celeste Mastria.
The Fund starts with an endowment of over €30 million, subscribed by CDP Venture Capital on behalf of the Digital Transition Fund – PNRR, which uses resources allocated by the EU through the NextGeneration EU initiative and aims to stimulate the growth of an innovation ecosystem in the sectors of digital transition. The first closing was made at €30 million and 360 Capital plans to continue the collection to increase the size of the fund and welcome new investors.
To date, five investments have already been made: Guidoio (a fully digital driving school service), Jampy (sustainable products for pet wellness), Zefi AI (SaaS to enhance qualitative feedback within companies), Talentware (SaaS for talent management and mapping of company skills) and Soource (procurement SaaS for profiling and pre-qualification of suppliers).
360 Digitaly’s latest investment was in Soource, an artificial intelligence-based platform that, through automated email flows and a powerful search engine connected to a database containing millions of highly profiled companies, optimizes and streamlines the supplier selection process. Soource was founded in Bolzano by Maicol Verzotto and Nazareno Mario Ciccarello.
The vision of the project – This new fund is part of the strategy of 360 Capital, one of the main players in Italian and French venture capital, which intends to accelerate the creation of companies led by Italian talent, promoting diversity and inclusion, with strong support for heterogeneous and young teams.
Lucrezia Lucotti, Partner of 360 Capital, commented: “360 Digitaly represents a bet on a new generation of entrepreneurs in our country. We want to reduce the innovation gap compared to other European ecosystems by stimulating the creation of companies capable of contributing to the economic and technological growth of our country. In Italy, when we talk about entrepreneurial talent, we often refer to the brain drain or the lack of opportunities, but we believe that this trend is reversing and that Italy can become the right country to launch startups in the coming years.”
“The investment in 360 Digitaly reflects CDP Venture Capital’s long-term commitment to promoting the development of technologies capable of addressing the challenges of the digital transition,” added Agostino Scornajenchi, CEO and General Manager of CDP Venture Capital. “In this closing we have channeled the resources of our Digital Transition Fund, created to manage the PNRR resources allocated by NextGeneration EU with the aim of stimulating the growth of an innovation ecosystem in the sectors of the digital transition.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/10/360-capital-raises-e30-million-for-first-close-of-new-early-stage-digital-transition-fund/
