To Be reports that it has closed a total new fundraising round worth more than EUR 1 million, concluding two capital increases in just a few months. In November 2023, To Be had launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on the Mamacrowd portal, exceeding the maximum target of EUR 900,000, which was joined by Azimut Eltif – Venture Capital ALIcrowd III, and Magic Spectrum, the programme dedicated to 5G and IoT of the CDP Venture Capital National Accelerators Network; the round is also participated in by Zest and Fondazione Compagnia San Paolo. These were joined by a further 97 investors. In July 2024, following the successful completion of the InnovaCultura empowerment programme organised by the Lombardy Region, Fondazione Cariplo and Unioncamere Lombardia with the support of Cariplo Factory, Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore, Fondazione Cariplo’s strategic and operational arm in the field of impact investing, decided to get on board by investing a further EUR 150,000, thus enabling To Be to exceed EUR 1 million in funding for its first seed round.
Resources will mainly be invested in strengthening the team with the aim of growing the company structure in different areas. New strategic and commercial partnerships will also be established with companies in the TLC sector, system integrators, and design studios. The company will allocate part of the capital to start entering international markets, starting with Europe.
“We are facing a new revolution, one that sees the world of lighting converging towards that of information & communication technology. These two worlds, until a few years ago, travelled on two parallel tracks. As lighting becomes connected and able to transmit data and enable new services, these two tracks meet and take us into a new era, one in which light becomes an enabling infrastructure. LiFi Zone is just the first piece of a broader plan where light is no longer just used to illuminate but becomes a source of services, data and information. To Be today positions itself as a company that provides value-added LED lighting solutions to meet the lighting needs of both corporate and public administrations. What differentiates us from a traditional lighting company is that our infrastructures feature, where functional, innovative value-added services and software based on technologies such as LiFi and Visible Light Communication,’ says Francesco Paolo Russo, founder and CEO of To Be (pictured), in a note.
To Be, born in 2016 from Russo’s vision and Raniero Pani’s experience in the lighting and home automation sector, has to its credit strategic and commercial partnerships and collaborations with companies such as Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), multinationals in the TLC sector and system integrators, as well as having obtained a pre-seed round of 75,000 euro in 2022 from Magic Spectrum as well as several public grants, thanks to the fact that LiFi solutions fully respond to the main European and PNRR funding and technology trends, embracing missions of ecological, digital and network infrastructure transition.
To Be is working in various sectors in both the public and corporate sectors. In the public sector, To Be’s lighting solutions offer indoor navigation and LiFi connectivity services, while for the corporate sector they match innovative office, meeting room and workplace projects. In addition to the cultural heritage and corporate worlds, the company is developing a proposition for the healthcare sector, which still has less than 10 per cent of its facilities equipped with LED lighting and will need to modernise its infrastructure in the coming years. To Be is working to demonstrate how an LED LiFi-VLC infrastructure can also be economically competitive with an alternative lighting proposal with equal lighting characteristics.
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