Apps Builder raises €1M($1.5M) in Series B funding from United Ventures

Milan, 17th April 2014 - AppsBuilder the new "all in one platform" to create, edit and distribute mobile apps at an affordable cost and without any programming knowledge, has raised €1M($1.5M) in Series B funding from United Ventures, first investment fund in Italy in the field of digital technologies, born in 2013 from the union of Annapurna Ventures, of Massimiliano Magrini and JV Capital of Paolo Gesess, to "shake up digital entrepreneurship by spotting and promoting disruptive innovations". The investment of United Ventures thus leads to € 2.5 million ($3.5M) the total funding received by the company from its founding in 2011. Indeed, it was in 2011 that Annapurna Ventures and The Net Value (startup incubator and Digital Media Nursery founded by Mario Mariani) joined the AppsBuilder project and supported it in the seeding phase and that, based on the company performance in its first year of operation, were able to convince the fund managers of Vertis Venture and Zernike Meta Ventures, to fund the innovative Milan-based startup with a capital injection amounting to  €1.5M ($2M), held back in October 2012.

The primary objective of this new injection of capital is the further acceleration of the growth in more competitive foreign markets. The company will focus also on the acquisition of new talent in the view of a strategic plan that aims to make the product highly competitive and achieve determined business goals by one of the most towing areas on global markets, especially by consolidating growth and business traction in both the UK and US markets. In addition to strengthening the brand positioning in international markets, the funding will allow AppsBuilder to strengthen the research and development, with the goal of expanding its portfolio of mobile products and services by 2015.

The Milan, Italy-based mobile publishing and distribution platform, founded in 2011 by Luigi Giglio and Daniele Pelleri  with an increase in turnover of 40% in the last six months, and about 1 million users in more than 70 countries around the world, is continuing its growth path and stands out as a strategic ally for SMEs and large enterprises that aim to build a strong presence on the mobile market to reach new customers through the apps. 

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H2i acquires 20% minority stake in INSEM SpA by investing €1M

Florence, 2nd April 2014 H2i - Initiative Holding Industriale SpA, the investment vehicle of the IN PRENDO Group, has acquired 20% of the share capital of the INSEM SpA. The agreement, which provides an opportunity for H2i to climb up to a 45% stake, will enable the company to consolidate and develop its business both in Italy and in foreign markets starting from Germany, where the company is already present.

The total amount of the transaction - which will be implemented in two phases - the first being carried out in recent days, and a second that will be implemented by March 31, 2015 -, is equal to €1M, partly equity and partly convertible bond. The expansion of the share capital to H2i will also allow INSEM to increase its strategic and managerial competences and to render more efficient, in a "partnership" perspective, the relationship with the banking industry .

The objective of the acquisition is the business consolidation in the Italian market of web marketing and implementation of an internationalization process towards more profitable markets starting from Germany, a country in which the company has already established a branch office, with the establishment of INSEM GmbH.  

 

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Cerved Group invest €1,35M in SpazioDati

Milan, 2nd April 2014 - SpazioDati, a cutting-edge start-up specialized in the management and semantic analysis of big data, especially of open and proprietary data from web and social media, has signed strategic partnership with Cerved Group, a leading Italian company specialized in business analysis and the development of risk assessment models, intended to create innovative applications of research, analysis and data management for new decision-making models guided by intelligence information.

The agreement foresees the entry of Cerved in the shareholding of SpazioDati with a minority stake of €1.35M by subscribing a reserved capital increase and partly by taking over some of the shareholders' shares.

Founded in 2012, the startup has developed cutting-edge technologies to improve the management processes of the growing volume of data within organizations, enabling new dimensions of analysis and exploitation of information assets. Its core business, in fact, is focused in the development of cloud technologies able to connect, filter, analyze and contextualize data from public (Open) and proprietary sources so that they can be easily used by developers and companies.

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Decysion raised $22M (€16M) in series B funding from Catalyst Investors

Decisyon Inc., a Latina, Italy and Stamford, US-based provider of business intelligence and performance management software solutions, announced it successfully closed a second $22M million financing round with group of investors led by the US growth equity firm Catalyst Investors. Decisyon Inc. is currently the only supplier in the industry that provides a collaborative platform that combines together business intelligence (BI) and performance management. The capital increase will allow the continued global expansion and growth of Decisyon and will allow the hiring of new talent in the United States and the rapid growth of sales and marketing activities in Europe along with the next step of development of the company's solutions.

It is the second investment round after the $15M series A funding raised in October 2012  by New York-based growth investor Axel Johnson Inc. and other prominent private technology investors from the US and the UK as well the $5M "venture loan facility" raised in March 2013 from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation, a leading US specialty finance company providing secured loans to venture capital and private equity backed development-state companies in the technology, life science, healthcare, information and services, and clean-tech industries. The overall funding raised so far by Decisyon amounts to $42M (€30M).

Decisyon was founded in 2005 in Latina (Italy) by Franco Petrucci, 48, an engineer who invented a software to adapt technological system to the way of working. Put short, a platform that lets you write, consult accounting, communicate with colleagues and suppliers without jumping from one program to another. "I analyze, collaborate, decide, indeed".  The advantage of the unified solution is in the possibility to pass from analysis to collaboration, from social to execution, from the analysis of Big Data generated by company facilities to the decision to change a production process, with a simple mouse click.

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Diamantech raises €160k in equity crowdfunding on Unicaseed

Genova, 1 April, 2014 - Diaman Tech S.r.l. the Marcon (Venice) based innovative startup specialized in the supply of software applications for the financial sector (seed below), has raised €160k in a equity crowdfunding round on the Unicaseed platform, the crowdfunding platform managed by the Genova-based Unicasim, in what has been the first operation in which a European company has been able to raise venture capital through an equity crowdfunding platform in compliance with a national law (Italy) and the Regulations of a Supervisory Authority (CONSOB). The equity crowdfunding round closed at just 10 pct over its target last 31th March, 2014.

With the publication by CONSOB (the italian supervisory authority), of the "Regulation no. 18592 of 26 June 2013 - The collection of risk capital on the part of innovative start-ups via on-line portals", Italy been the first EU county to have passed a structured legislation of equity-based crowdfunding.

The fund raising campaign began a bit muted on December 31 2013, coinciding with the launch of the Unicaseed platform, direct emanation of Unicasim SpA, with registered office in Genoa and with offices throughout Italy, the first financial intermediary authorized in the management of a Equity Crowdfunding platform in the face of the registration at the Section Special the special register kept by Consob.

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Quadrivio Capital SGR seeks €100M for second VC fund TTVenture Due

Quadrivio one the leading private equity funds in Italy with more than €1 Bln of assets under management, has announced the launch of its second fund called TTVenture Due with a target of €100M which will invest in highly innovative and technological startups in the Life Sciences, Healthcare, Cleantech and New Materials space. The new TTVenture Due fund will be successor of Quadrivio's first fund TTVenture which launched in 2008 with a target of €64 million has been subscribed by the major italian banking fondations such as Fondazione Cariplo, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Cuneo, Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Parma, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio della Provincia di Teramo, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio dell’Aquila, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno, State Street Global Advisors and Camera di Commercio di Milano.

In its six years of operation, the first TTVenture fund has made 23 investments in innovative startups across different sectors mainly in the life sciences, medtech, new materials, cleantech, agri-food and industrial technology. Aim, Biouniversa, Bluegreen, Cogisen, CryptoLab, Directa Plus, D-Orbit, Eucardia, Glomeria Therapeutics, IpadLab, M31, MilkyWay, Pilegrowth Tech, Personal Factory, SanSeverino, Sem+, TTSeed and TTAdvisor are the innovative startups that benefted from the investment of the first TTVenture fund. The first TTVenture fund which was managed by fund Fondamenta SGR did also invest in four international funds such as Sofimac Partners (France - biotech), Terra Venture Partners (Israel - clean technologies and renewables), AXON Partners Group (Spain - material sciences) and Vertis (Southern Italy - digital technolgies. In 2012 was acquired by Quadrivio sgr when Fondamenta SGR became a subsidiary of Quadrivio.

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Condomani raises €100k in seed funding from ZernikeMeta Ventures

Bologna, April 1, 2014. Condomani.it has received an investment of €100,000 from the fund ZernikeMeta Ventures, through the Fund Ingenium Emilia Romagna II co-financed by POR FESR of the Emilia Romagna Region. Condomani is the social network for the condominiums management addressed to facing all the figures that revolve around the world of condominiums: co-tenants, building managers, professionals and suppliers.

Not only Zernike decided to bet on the first social network for the management of condominiums. Several business angels have chosen to be part of the Condomani project: Marco Bibocchi Pichi, now in the Board of Directors of Condomani, one of the most important actors of the Italian technological landscape, and former manager of Ernst & Young , Booz Allen Hamilton, and his wife Silvia Goff , architect.

Fabio Chinaglia, CEO of Eco-Mind, Paolo Lasagni, an entrepreneur in the field of consultancy services to companies on issues of ICT governance and credit risk; Alessandro Liguori, computer expert and Marco Bonaro, business consultant and condominium administrator.

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