Italy’s angels & incubators, fintech and venture capital weekly roundup. News from Consob, Sportclubby, Agencasa, ClauseMatch, Sibylla Biotech, United Ventures, Entire Digital Publishing, UCapital24

Consob, the Italian Stock market regulator, published on Friday 18 October the new Regulation on the raising of capital through online portals that allowes the activity of equity crowdfunding portals to expand to the placement of debt instruments and provides for new types of investors other than professional and professional on request, who are entitled to subscribe to these instruments (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The Italian Budget Law for 2019 introduced the possibility for platforms to host SMEs’ campaigns to raise debt from professional investors. The Budget Law delegated Consob to decide about the possibility to identify new types of investors intitle to subscribe bonds or debt securities other than professional and qualified investors.

Sportclubby, an Italian platform for booking gym classes and joining sport events, raised 674k euros 104% of overfunding with its equity crowdfunding campaign on Mamacrowd (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The list of investors includes Sara Gama, a footballore of Juventus Women team and skipper of Italy’s national team, venture capital fund Oltre Venture, and Wylab, an incubator of sportech companies that Wyscout’s team created. Oltre Venture and Wylab previously invested in Sportclubby’s first round worth 600k euros together with Italian sportech Deltatre. Antonio Gozzi is one of the founders of Wylab. Lorenzo Allievi is one of the founders and ceo of Oltre Venture. Biagio Bartoli and Stefano De Amici founded Sportclubby at the end of 2016. The company has sales of above 0.150 million and will invest the resources it raised in its machine learning and data science platforms.

The European accelerator Rocket Internet Capital Partners invested in Italian proptech Agencasa.it (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Alessio De Rosa, the former sales director in Italy of Groupon, founded Agencasa in May 2019. Agencasa.it charges a flat fee of up to 590 euros for sales and of up to 290 euros for rental contracts. The company handles a portfolio of houses based in Milan and in Naples worth above 15 million euros and recently started its activities in Monza. Agencasa aims to operate also in Rome, Turin, and Florence and hire further 50 human resources. In February 2015, Rocket Internet Capital acquired Pizzabo, an Italian startup for the home delivery of food. In 2016 Neva Finventures, the corporate venture capital of Intesa Sanpaolo, invested in Rocket Internet Capital.

London-based RegTech ClauseMatch signed a partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo for the authomatization of infragroup service contracts at the bank’s Cost Management Officer unit (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Evgeny Likhoded (ceo) founded ClauseMatch in 2012 together with Andrey Dokuchaev (coo). Since its birth, the company raised 9.3 million US Dollars through 6 rounds: 4 seed rounds in August 2012, febbraio 2014 (55,000 dollars from the community of Level39), June 2014 (0.100 million Dollars from Techstars, SparkLabs Global Ventures, and Barclays Accelerator), and June 2017 (1.6 million from leading investor Speedinvest, the previous round investors, Thomas Glocer, and Cristòbal Conde); a series A round in April 2018 (5 million from US venture capital Index Ventures and other investors). ClauseMatch also received a financing of 2.5 million from the Silicon Valley Bank in May 2019.

Sibylla Biotech raised a seed round of 2.4 million euros from Vertis (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Sibylla is a spin-off of INFN (the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics), the University of Perugia, and of Trento University that received support from Fondazione Telethon. The company developed the PPI-FIT Pharmacological Protein inactivation by Targeting Folding Intermediates method for discovering drugs. Emiliano Biasini and Pietro Faccioli, two associate professors of Trento University, founded the company. ITAtech is the anchor investor of Vertis.

United Ventures launched United Ventures II Lazio (UV2L) (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The fund has resources of 10 million euros and will co-invest with United Ventures 2 in innovative software and digital startups that aim to expand internationally. The Investment Management team of K&L Gates assisted United Ventures for the creation of UV2L whose anchor investor is Lazio Innova, that coo Andrea Ciampalini leads. Lazio Innova invests the European structural funds for 2014-2020 in Lazio-based scaleups through the funds of funds Lazio Venture. To date there are four planned investments of Lazio Venture in as many funds :in addition to United Ventures 2,  the selection includes funds managed by Fondo Italiano di Investimento sgr, Vertis sgr and Primomiglio sgr, while 360 Capital Partners should be added to the list soon.

Entire Digital Publishing, an Italian startup that provides artificial intelligence tools for the publishing industry and owner of the portal Notizie.it, launched a 3.5 million euros round (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Massimiliano Squillace, an Italian serial entrepreneur of the pblishing and communication sector, founded Entire Digital Publishing in 2017. Squillace already carried out four exits. One of these is the sale of Nanopublishing to Excite Populis. This year, Entire Digital Publishing previously raised 1.2 million for developing further its proprietary technology. Notizie.it raised 450k euros on equity crowdfunding platform Mamacrowd with a target of 500k euros and on the ground of a pre-money value of 5.15 millions. In 2018, the company posted sales of 631k euros with an ebitda of 171k euros. The company will invest the proceeds of this new round in its own proprietary technology and in its expansion in Spain, the UK, and France, where it already acquired three local domains. Madrid will open in 1Q20, Paris office will start by 3Q20 and London subsidiary will start operating in autumn 2020. Squillace said that the company aims to open 7 foreign bureaus by 2025.

Italian fintech startup UCapital24 (UC24) filed its pre-admission application with Milan Aim  in view of listing by November  (see here a previous post by BeBeez). UCapital24 created a marketplace with a proprietary algorithm for financial services and information. Morningstar, Autochartist, DX Feed are some of the company’s clients. UC24 will list a 10% stake and convert in equity some of the financing that the shareholders provided. The pre-money value of the firmi s in the region of 8 million euros. This private placement listing has a least fundraising target of 2.2 million from institutional investors after having raised capital by 2 million euros thanks to a debt-to-equity swap by some shareholders and subscription of a pre-ipo reserved capital increase. The company will issue up to 1.1 million of new ordinary shares at an expected price of 4 euros and an expected post-money market capitalization of 11.5 millions with a publicly traded equity of up to 19%. For every new share, the company will give a warrant to private placement investors. Gianmaria Feleppa is the founder and ceo of UCapital24, which belongs to UCapital Ltd (85%), the holding of Feleppa, da Vetrya (12.5%) and 4Media (2.5%). Vetrya and 4Media in UC24 in February 2018 and paid 0.25 million for a 25% stake and 50,000 euros for a 5%. In 1Q19, UCapital Ltd converted in equity a credit of one million and halved the stakes of Vetrya and 4Media. The company’s board members are Giuseppe Vegas (the former head of Italian stock market regulator Consob); Davide Leonardi, Stefano Mazzocchi, Werther Montanari (independent), Edoardo Narduzzi, and Giovanni Natali.