Italian Angels for Growth (IAG), the largest business angel network in Italy, recently presented the updated analysis of the IAG INDEX. This indicator aims at monitoring the vibrancy of the Italian startup ecosystem in terms of investment opportunities for business angels. It also helps to monitor the trends in the Italian venture capital industry.
In 14 years of activity, IAG has analysed over 6,000 startups and has finalised over 105 investments through club deals. In addition, IAG business angels have invested more than € 45 million in companies that have raised an additional € 315 million from investors.
The index, which is calculated on the IAG’s deal flow, is based on six parameters: industrial sector, stage of the fundraising round, valuation, geographical area, gender diversity in the team and – starting from the current year – ESG impact.
IAG analysed 477 startups of the period July 2020 – June 2021, of which 38% related to the digital area, 31.3% to the life science sector, 20.5% deeptech and 10.2% fintech.
Most of the IAG’s deal flow is related to startups looking for seed capital (65.8%). A lower number of startups (18,7%) contact IAG for series A rounds. And about 40% of IAG’s finalised investments are related to startups in the life science sector.
The most relevant results are related to the fintech industry. According to the 2021 analysis, fintech is the sector with the fastest growing company valuations. In particular, fintech has the highest pre-money valuations in the various stages of funding, pre-seed (€ 3.5 million), seed (€ 6.4 million) and series A (€ 19.2 million) rounds. It is also the industry where the difference in valuation is the greatest, almost € 13 million between the seed and Series A rounds.
In general, there’s a difference between the average pre-money valuation of Italian and foreign startups. This difference reaches 40% in the case of Series A rounds (€ 14.4 million for foreign startups against € 10.5 million for Italian startups).
Regarding gender diversity, 34.8% of the analysed startups have at least one female founder in their teams (higher than the international average, which is about 20%).
This is particularly true for the fintech industry, where there was a substantial increase in women’s presence in the fintech startups’ team (35%, compared to 25% in 2020) in the last 12 months.
Moreover, the IAG index confirmed that the number of “female” startups is particularly significant in the life science sector, where one-third of the analysed companies have at least one female founder.
Regarding the new parameter analysed by the IAG Index, the ESG factor, 37.4% of the analysed startups have a “responsible” approach to environmental, social or governance aspects. Life science is the industry that pays most attention to ESG elements. Two third of life science startups have sustainability criteria integrated into their strategy to create value in the medium/long term. In recent years, fintech startups have also drastically increased their focus on ESG factors. As a result, fintech is the sector in which attention to ESG issues is growing almost vertically, surpassing, for example, the digital industry (25% vs 14%).
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For more info (in Italian) visit: https://www.italianangels.net/news/iag-index-fintech-a-fast-growing-sector-driven-by-women/