360 Capital, the French-Italian venture capital firm with over EUR 500 million under management, announces that it has completed the first closing of EUR 30 million of 360 Digitaly, a 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 analogue or fragmented. The project was managed in all its phases by, Lucrezia Lucotti, partner at 360 Capital, supported by investor Celeste Mastria (both pictured).
The fund starts with an endowment of over EUR 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 digital transition sectors. The first closing was at EUR 30 million and 360 Capital plans to continue raising 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 pet wellness products), Zefi AI (SaaS for enhancing qualitative feedback within companies), Talentware (SaaS for talent management and skills mapping of companies) and Soource (procurement SaaS for supplier profiling and pre-qualification). Soource, is 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, optimises and makes efficient the supplier selection process. Soource was founded in Bolzano by Maicol Verzotto and Nazareno Mario Ciccarello.
The new fund is part of 360 Capital’s strategy to accelerate the birth of companies led by Italian talent, promoting diversity and inclusion, with strong support for heterogeneous and young teams.
Lucrezia Lucotti, partner at 360 Capital, comments in a note: “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 birth 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 could become the right country to launch start-ups 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 meeting the challenges of the digital transition,” says Agostino Scornajenchi, managing director and general manager of CDP Venture Capital. “In this closing, we have channelled the resources of our Digital Transition Fund, which was created to manage the PNRR resources allocated by NextGeneration EU with the aim of stimulating the growth of an innovation ecosystem in the digital transition sectors.
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