Friday, June 12, 2015

Tiassisto24 raises €350k from LVenture Group

New round of funding for TiAssisto24, the app that assists in road accidents. LVenture Group participated with FIRA - Finanziaria Regionale Abruzzese - and several Business Angels in a co-investment in TiAssisto24, startup that solves all problems related to the use of cars and motorcycles, for a total of €350k.
TiAssisto24 is a platform that simplifies life to motorists helping them to save money and time and providing them with best services. The startup will receive the investment in two tranches, the first of €250k and the second of €100k. LVenture Group is committed to a total investment of 75 thousand Euros. €250k will be provided by the Finanziaria Regionale Abruzzese (FIRA), under the call "StartUp StartHope" call, dedicated to the creation and growth of innovative enterprises. The remaining amount comes instead from some business angels.
"With this investment, we will have the needed
resources to implement the business and technology roadmap - explains Michele Romagnoli, CEO of TiAssisto24 -. We want to become the first player in Italy in the independent assistance to motorists, thatnks to launch in each town of value-added services such as 'SOS fines' and the network of personal assistants."

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

LVenture launches Angel Partner Group

Network, selected investment opportunities, business education: these are the three pillars which underpin Angel Partner Group, the new association officially presented at Luiss Enlabs in front of a selected audience of more than 100 potential investors. The association was founded on initiative of LVenture Group, a holding company listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, with the aim of bringing and growing together a community of investors who believe in the social value created by innovation. Domenico Nesci - presenting for the first time the new association of which he is President - said, "APGroup has strong international vocation. We want to cross the Italian border and immediately create a network of investors globally"A network of high-level and  global reach, therefore, within whom shareholders, thanks to networking events and a digital platform, can interact fueling personal and professional relationships, sharing investment opportunities and creating new business ventures." 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Enjore raises €500k in funding from Ligurcapital and a group of Business Angels

Enjore the free digital platform that allows to freely manage tournaments in leagues online for sports, videogames and games in a professional way, has received an equity investment from Ligurcapital Spa, the venture capital fund of the Liguria region, and from a small group of business angel, all managers of large companies with an extensive international experience. The total value of the transactions amounts to 500,000 €. The investment will allow Enjore to develop the mobile part of the platform that launched in 2013, which counts now about 70,000 registered users, 1,500 active organizers of tournaments and 300,000 monthly visits between web and mobile.  

The raised funds will be deployed to improve above all the user experience for tablets and
smartphones users and to add a number of features for the organizers who will be able to manage whole competitions directly from the playing fields. The current free version of Enjore will be complemented by a package of premium services for the most demanding organizers and of medium-large size. Moreover, the startup aims to consolidate its leadership in Italy, where it has opened a new sales office in Genoa which is added to the head office located in Capurso, in the province of Bari, and the strengthening of its presence in Northern Europe, considering that Enjore is already present in Spain, England and Bulgaria. The company is led by Nicola Taranto, founder and CEO, Luca Carollo (COO and co-founder). Advisor is Luca Colombo, country manager of Facebook Italy. 

Friday, April 24, 2015

Atooma raises €600k in funding from LVenture Group and Unicredit

Milan, 24 April 2015 - Unicredit bets on Atooma and invests €105k in the Android application that allows you to customize the functions of your smartphone by creating mini-apps without knowing any programming code. The banking institute of square Gae Aulenti, just over a year after the launch of the acceleration program UniCredit Start Lab, has made an investment of €105k part of an overall investment of €595k in partnership with LVenture Group, one of the leading institutional investors in the industry, as well as various angel investors and industrial partners.

The investment will allow the further growth of Atooma, a company founded in 2012 from an idea of ​​the current CEO Fabrizio Cialdea and which is growing rapidly . The solution proposed by Atooma is a software platform that allows companies working in the field of Smart Home, Mobile, Wearable and Automotive, to integrate on heir devices and their services an artificial intelligence, capable of activating automation and contextual tips, with the aim of providing its users with a "magical" experience.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Bravofly Acquires Map2App

BravoFly Rumbo Group N.V., the Swiss multinational operating in the electronic tourism and recently listed on the Six Swiss Exchange, present in Italy with the brand Volaregratis, has acquired the assets of Map2app, a Bologna-based startup focused in the creation of apps for touristic guides allowing customers to turn any destination into an app. 

Map2app is the easiest way to create and manage tourist guides for smartphones (iPhone and Android) and is currently used by tour operators, tourism offices, event organizers, tourist portals, publishers and web portals in over 20 countries. In 2 years, thanks to Map2app, were produced over 500 app, which have been downloaded over 1,000,000 times. The company mission is to enable even the smaller firms to promote their territory in a modern and functional way.

 Even though the financial terms of the operation were not disclosed, it is a case of "acqui-hire", or acquisition, in particular team ("talent acquisition"). The goal of the acquisition is to expand BravoFly expertise in the mobile space: indeed Map2app has developed a web-based platform that enables its customers to create mobile travel guides. It does not require any technical skill and it is designed for marketers. You just need good content, a great destination to promote (city, festival, museum… anything!) and your imagination and in few hours you can create a professional app for iPhone, Android and HTML5 devices.
 
This acquisition represents a unique

Monday, December 22, 2014

Qurami raises €590k in seed funding from UniCredit Start Lab, LVenture Group and Italian Angels for Growth (IAG)


Less than 10 months after the launch of the program acceleration UniCredit Start Lab, sponsored by UniCredit to encourage the development of innovative Italian startups, the bank has delivered its first investment in favor of Qurami, a young Roman company which is developing an app that eliminates queues.

The investment of total €590k was carried out by UniCredit, in cooperation with LVenture Group, one of the first operators of Seed Venture Capital listed on the MTA of the Italian Stock Exchange, and other business angels of the Italian Angels for Growth (IAG) network. Qurami is the first startup, among those involved in the UniCredit Start Lab - whose first edition of the program has attracted numerous startups operating in different sectors, from Life Science to ICT, from the Made in Italy to Cleantech - in which UniCredit steps in with a direct investment. The company stood out for its ability to capture market needs and translate them into business ideas. 

The investment round will now allow

wiMAN Raises €700K in Seed Funding from TIM Ventures, P101 and Club Italia Investimenti 2.


Milan/Bologna, December 19th, 2014 - WiMAN, among the most extended social Wi-Fi networks in Italy, opens up its capital to a pool of investors led by Tim Ventures, a company of the Telecom Italia Group born to invest in the best Italian digital startups, and by P101, operator of venture capital promoted by Andrea Di Camillo. Among the new shareholders there is is also Club Italia Investimenti 2. The overall investment amounts to €700k.

Founded in 2012 by Massimo Ciuffreda (CEO and co-founder) and Michele di Mauro (CTO and co-founder) WiMAN was initially backed by Matteo Riffeser Monti as business angel and by the accelerator NanaBianca that has financially followed the capital increase. 

The company was founded in 2009 with a clear mission: to bring the wifi throughout the country and reset at once the digital divide. In 2011 the founders decided to risk everything again and invested their savings of a lifetime to start a new adventure: WiMAN officially becomes a startup! Starting from scratch was not easy; but as always passion and tenacity prevailed.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

TIM Ventures invests €410k in Pedius

TIM Ventures, the company  of the Telecom Italia Group has made its first step in the venture capital space in support of the best digital startups and, along with Sistema Investmenti and Embed Capital, has invested a total of €410k in Pedius, the Rome, Italy-based startup that led by Lorenzo Ciaccio and with a team of 8 people, has developed a communication system that allows hearing impaired people to perform normal phone calls by means of speech recognition and vocal synthesis technologies.

You can use in your everyday life to make important calls such as booking doctors appointments or making reservations or to call family, friends and co-workers. Once you download the Smartphone app you can start a conversation by either typing or speaking a message. The person you are calling will hear this and reply, and you will immediately read a transcription of what he or she just said. 
Pedius gives you the freedom to have real-time conversations when you need to call a plumber, book a table at your favourite restaurant, or talk to you doctor. All this is done with full respect for your privacy because you're the only one who sees the communication between you and those you speak with.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

U-Start Ventures: a new VC Fund targeting at raising €30M to support Italian Digital & Tech Startups

Milan, 15 December 2014 - U-Start, a Milan, Italy-based global boutique advisory firm, founded in 2012, focused on direct and direct venture capital investments providing fully fledged services to private investors - family offices and high-net-worth individuals - corporations and early stage companies in the search for investment opportunities and companies at international level, has launched U-Start Ventures, the VC fund that will invest on early-growth stage companies in the digital & tech space. The fundraising phase aims to raise €30M by the end of 2015, although the fund will be operational when it will held the first closing expected by the first quarter of 2015 at €10M.

U-Start Ventures will make use of the expertise and resources of U-Start, which are characterized by a strong territorial trait: teams based in Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, Turkey, Mexico, Chile and Italy, that thanks to a thorough knowledge of the area and of the local players, offer advice to potential international investors by identifying and analyzing for them the most interesting deals on the market. Thanks to extensive and developed network of service providers operating in the territory U-Start may, in fact, provide support in the due diligence of the business, financial and legal, both locally and internationally.

According to a company note, the VC fund will

Thursday, December 11, 2014

D-Orbit raises €2.2M in VC Funding from Como Venture and Quadrivio SGR

Milan, 11 December 2014 - D-Orbit, young company operating in the aerospace sector and promoter of innovation and technological development aimed at mitigating the impending problem of 'space junk', cuts the ribbon of a new successfully completed investment round in its fundraising path. 

The company did involve in this round old and new financial investors: Quadrivio Capital SGR, which accompanied and supported D-Orbit in all its path since its birth, and Como Venture, one of the most active financial realities in the world Italian start-ups. D-Orbit raised €2.2M in VC Funding, respectively €1.95M from Quadrivio through its TTSeed and TTVenture funds (the Quadrivio segment focused on venture capital) and €250k from Como Venture.

D-Orbit, active in the development of decommissioning systems of satellites (i.e. systems responsible for the safe and controlled removal of satellites at the end of their service life), in just over three years has been internationalized, with a strong presence in Europe and the United States States, has qualified its innovative device, has signed promising partnerships of a commercial nature and has received recognition and support from space agencies around the world: among others ASI, ESA and NASA.

The company founded in 2011 by the idea of four young aerospace engineers, thanks to the support of the TT Venture fund (the segment focused on venture capital of Quadrivio), has, over the years, and with continuity, collected significant successes that have allowed it to become a small but dynamic company able to make deals with the big players in the industry.

The fundraising path does not ends with this investment round, but will continue in 2015 with the aim to attract more foreign and Italian investors.

Luca Rossettini, first founder and CEO of the company, publicly thanked Quadrivio for the support it has been able to provide in the recent years contributing to the company's growth, and Como Venture that will