Innogest SGR and Principia SGR on Fund Raising Tour to back Italy's Dynamic Startup Ecosystem

Innogest SGR and Principia SGR two of Italy's leading VC-funds have recently announced the preparation of three new VC funds. The Turin (Innogest) and Milan (Principia) based seed investors after a very exciting and successful 2012 on the investment side, with respectively 3 (Innogest) and 12 (Principia) operations of seed and venture capital financing breakthrough ides and very promising Italian startups of now announced the launch of their new VC funds.

Innogest SGR has announced this week the first closing of the new fund, Innogest Capital II, at roughly 50 Mln Euro.  With the first closing of its second fund, Innogest SGR's total capital under management amounts now to 140 Mln Euro , confirming Innogest s position as the leading italian venture capital firm. Oh the other side Principia SGR revealed to the magazine MF-Milano Finanza that it is preparing the launch of two new venture capital funds for the development of innovative companies in the digital space, one dedicated to life sciences and the other conceived for the made in Italy (with exception for the food industry). Target of the funds raising are very ambitious: we talk about 100 Mln Euro each.

Michele Costabile, Vicepresident at Principia SGR, interviewed by BeBeez told that on March 30th, 2013 Principia II closed its investment period, having fully invested its financial endowment, at the net of paid and due fees. Overall, the fund has invested 53 Mln Euro in 30 different operations of seed and expansion capital in southern Italy.

The most important investment closed by Principia SGR was

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Jusp raises €4,500,000 ($6,000,000) from Principia II and Vertis Venture Funds

JUSP Spa a Milan-based startup operating in the mobile POS hot market, announced on Wednesday 3rd April, 2013 the closing of a $ 6 million (€ 4.5 mln) equity round with two, also Milan-based, leading VC funds, Principia II and Vertis Venture. The investment round represent one of the biggest rounds ever made by VC funds in italian startups.

The round was led by Principia SGR and Vertis SGR with the participation of some angel investors: Stefano Calderano (previously BNL Paribas, Banca Intesa and Poste Italiane), Paolo Giuda (Lehman Brothers)  Bruno Spadoni (former DG Setefi), Giulio Valiante (Saldi Privati and Jobrapido) and Simone Ranucci Brandimarte (Glamoo), who also led the first $700k seed investment in 2012.

The new management board is composed by Stefano Calderano (Previously BNL Paribas, Banca Intesa and Poste Italiane) as Chief Executive Office (CEO), Paolo Giuda Chief Financial Officer (CFO), founders Jacopo Vannetti and Giuseppe Nicola Saponaro as CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and COO (Chier Operating Officer) respectively. Roberto Mazzei currently president of Principia SGR has been appointed Chairman of JUSP. 

Thanks to the equity injection, Jusp will be able to

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Principia invests in D-Share

D-Share, an italian firm specialized in technologies and solutions for digital publishing, announced the entry of Principia SGR in its shareholding.

Principia SGR a leading italian venture capital firm, entered in D-Share by subscribing with the "Principia II" Fund an increase of the share capital for total 1.8 million €. 

D-Share was founded in 2010 with the target to develop solutions of excellence for the publishing industry, in order to accelerate the migration of traditional activities to the business of creation and distribution of digital contents. Thanks to the vertical competences in the media and digital publishing industry, as well as in the specialization in segments of exponential growth such as tablets, mobile, web content management, D-Share conquered a leadership role in the national arena and has successfully started its international expansion. The entry of  Principia SGR in the capital of D-Share will allow the company

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Mosaicoon: growth & funding of the leading italian media viral company

MOSAICOON headquartered in Palermo, Sicily, and with offices in Milan, Rome and London is one of the hottest italian startups in the online advertising space. Since its foundation in december 2009, the mission of the company has been to develop a new integrated model of digital communication through the realization of an innovative system of online advertising. The company founded by Ugo Parodi Giusino, has developed a unique communication model of advertising campaigns of web engagement through viral videos and is nowadays one of the few Italian companies specialized in the production, distribution and monitoring of viral campaigns with a network of more than 95 millions of users worldwide, offering companies an integrated online communication strategy by focusing on users and their brand perceptions. The company has a very advanced structure in terms of strategic know-how and creative thinking through its two proprietary software platforms (Plavid & Tracking) for the distribution and monitoring of viral campaigns, offering seeding and tracking services of contents produced externally, Video Marketing, Content and Social Media Marketing, Smartphone Applications, Interactive and Web Design.

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Mangatar receives funding from dPixel

Mangatar, a gaming factory specialized in the development of social games, has raised funding from dPixel, advisor of the investment vehicle Digital Investments SCA SICAR. The financing will be used to launch the new version of Dengen Chronicles.

Dengen Chronicles,  the first title of Mangatar, is a trading card game set in the world of Japanese Mangas in which players can personalise their own cards in an extremely detailed way and fighting against other real players. Dengen Chronicles is playable in the beta version under www.dengenchronicles.com, version which already includes many of the features of the final version being, at the time being, under full development.

The market for social games, with more than 300 million monthly players, generates more than 60% of revenues from the sale of virtual goods usable within the game itself. In the course of the last year around 4 billion of dollars of virtual goods have been sold, while for 2015 this value it is expected to grow well beyond 15 billion of dollars.

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Principia SGR backs 4W MarketPlace with 2.5 Million Euros

 With this investment the Milan-based innovative startup, born with the support of the venture incubator Digital Magics, aims to strenghten the technological development and to further consolidate its podition as italian leader among onlime advertising platform for Premium Publishers.

4w MarketPlace the leading Italian premium ad-network within the online performance advertising space which partners with the main italian publishers as well as media agencies, has recently announced the entry of Principia SGR in its shareholding by mean of the acquisition of a stake in the company. Principia SGR, one of the largest and leading Italian venture capital firms, has invested 2.5 Million Euros by underwriting a capital increase targeted to back the Milan-based startup created by the venture incubator "Digital Magics".

The investment provided by Principia SGR will help the company to strengthen its technology department for R&D in the field of computational advertising as well as the study of new cutting-edge online advertising models. These activities will be carried out at the company offices in the town of Fisciano, benefiting - among others - from the strategic partnership with the Department of Communication Sciences of the University of Salerno. 

All this will allow 4w MarketPlace to consolidate its presence

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Vivocha raises € 1.5 million from Vertis Venture and Principia II

Vivocha, an italian startup which provides online customer care services to corporates clients has raised € 1.5 million from Vertis Venture and Principia II. This is a really great news in view of its participation to TechCrunch Italy which will be held in Rome on next 27th September 2012. 

Vivocha, an italian startup with headquarter in Cagliari - Sardinia - and offices in Milan and San Francisco, offers an cloud-based platform of Customer Care Interactions addressed to corporate clients which want to improve the real-time management to target their audience aiming at maximizing and optimizing online sales and assistance services. By enabling all real-time channels of communication such as Chat, VoIP, Callback, and "share" functions (co-browsing, form sharing and content sharing) Vivocha

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Risparmio Super raises € 400,000 from Ingenium Catania and LVentures

Risparmio Super, a price-comparison web service, has raised recently raised € 400k in a financing round which will allow the company launching a further phase of its growth and expansion on foreign markets. 

The funding, announced in Catania during a press release held by the president of the province Giuseppe Castiglione, shows that to believe in the project of the thirty-five years old businesswoman Barbara Labate and of the ital-israeli web expert Zion Nahum, are the local institutions. The funds which will enable the company to start expanding abroad come from Zernike Meta Ventures, a Italian-Dutch joint venture that manages the Ingenium fund in the province of Catania dedicated to the most innovative companies in the region, and LVenture, venture capital fund managing the EnLabs incubator. 

So Risparmio Super, can now look to the States, retracing reversely the path that led Barbara to the Master of the Columbia University - during which the need to save time and money for the daily shopping brought her to the idea which gave birth to Risparmio Super - to go back to Italy, meet with Zion and launch their web company, which compares the prices of hyper- and supermarkets in Italy to help to save up to $ 1,000 a year on spending. Risparmio Super - with offices in Milan and Catania - is today the only Italian site that analyzes and compares 45 brands of the Italian GDO in a widespread manner, by monitoring more than 10,000 stores and comparing prices of daily food, hygiene products, consumer electronics and appliances. The idea is a winner and has been rewarded by the consumers to whom it provides a valuable service: the site's members rose from 30,000 to over 100,000 in the over the past two months. These numbers make it the absolute leader in the Italian market for online food prices comparison.

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Atlante Ventures Invests in Yogitech

Atlante Ventures, venture capital fund of the group Intesa Sanpaolo which, as stated on the IMI Funds site, "invests in risk capital of innovative firms with high growth potential, with particular attention to those active in sectors with high technology," has announced to have invested € 1 Million to enter the Yogitech SpA capital, a Pisa-based company specializing in the development of hardware and software improving the safety of electronic devices.

The operation is part of an overall € 1.5 Million capital increase round, which has seen Toscana Ventures, a fund managed by Sici Sgr (asset management fund) as well as current financial shareholder in Yogitech SpA, subscribing the remaining half million euro of the capital increase. 

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H-Farm launches the "Digital Academy"

In the venetian countryside a training center destined to raise the new Zuckenbergs. The project developed by H-Farm, is funded by a consortium of entrepreneurs from the North-East.

 Not all talents run away from Italy. Someone resists and makes the difference: some remains, develops ideas and puts them into practice. One of those ideas, project first, and reality finally, is under our eyes: is called, Digital Academy the school for the diffusion of digital born from the efforts of bright and creative, but at the same time pragmatic minds, raised in a place immersed in the nature, Tenuta Ca' Tron in Roncade, near Treviso. A renovated farmhouse has become the meeting place with three workrooms, two classrooms, a relaxation area, a park of over 12,000 square meters with WiFi coverage and 25 beds. It was dreamed, incubated and financed privately and now, after months of preparation, has officially opened its doors. 

A place where everyone

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