According to the 2019 report of the Open Innovation and Corporate Venture Capital Observatory, the Italian Corporate Venture Capital was valued € 489 million in 2018.
The Observatory analysed the shareholding structures of 10.546 innovative start-ups, and identified 6.298 shareholders in the form of limited companies, which were then defined as Corporate Venture Capital investors. Of these investors, 3,713 were “first level shareholders”.
Perhaps the definition of Corporate Venture Capital investors used in the analysis was too broad, as it probably included SPVs and other investment vehicles. Moreover, the performed analysis focused only on innovative start-ups, which are companies registered into a special sections of the Italian Business Register.
For the definition of innovative start-up read: Innovative start-ups and SMEs: definition for the Italian law
Therefore, the Observatory performed an additional analysis and identified 180 investors, specialised in innovation, who invested (directly and indirectly) € 192 million in 3,736 Italian companies.
The 3,736 companies were then classified into two groups:
- 1,617 companies were defined “young”, as established for no more than 5 years; of these, 398 (10.7%) were innovative start-ups;
- the remaining 2,119 companies were defined “mature”.
Investments in young companies increased by 66.7% compared to the previous year, while investments in mature companies decreased by 1.75%.
SOURCES:
You can find more info on the Open Innovation and Corporate Venture Capital Observatory’s statistics (in Italian) at the following link: https://www.osservatorio-openinnovation.it
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