Of the nearly 110 thousand shares that currently make up the capital of about 16 thousand startup and innovative Italian SMEs, those coming from Corporate venture capital (CVC) are over 20 thousand and of these around 9 thousand are related to direct investments. The shareholders of company “Vc” are numerically up 12% compared to 2020 and reach 12 thousand, with 8,170 who have set foot in startups and the remaining 3,560 in small and medium-sized businesses. The data in question are extracted from the sixth edition of the Observatory promoted by Assolombarda and InnovUp, a research that clearly confirms the positive trend of investments by Italian and international companies, with direct consequences on the development of open innovation in our country.
In outlining the map of the players in this ecosystem, financial investors (141 those registered in 2021) and Family & Friend shareholders, who participate in the capital of 9,485 startups and 1,021 innovative SMEs, were also counted for the first time.
About half of the investments from companies
The pandemic obviously had an impact on the dynamics of investments throughout 2020 but the balance relating to the capital distributed to innovative startups is positive and has reached 785 million. Of these, approximately 343 million come from corporate venture capital, 43.6% of the total.
Another 330 million have instead made them available to investors Family&Friends, over 103 million specialized investors (Vc funds in the lead) and the remaining 9 million were subscribed by financial partners. In the same period, investments in innovative SMEs exceeded 460 million euros, of which 236 million from CVC shareholders and about 198 million invested in ex-startups, know-how and tax incentives to reduce the gap with other countries
There are two observations to be recorded.
According to Angelo Coletta, President of InnovUp, “To reduce the gap between the Italian innovation ecosystem and that of the more mature markets, it is essential that consolidated companies participate in the growth of new high-tech realities, making available not only the necessary economic resources but also the know- strategic how “. According to Coletta, the partial reduction of the tax credit for research and development and technological innovation envisaged in the Budget Law 2022 goes in the opposite direction “and will have a significant negative impact on the sector”.
Paul Income, President of the Young Entrepreneurs Group of Assolombarda, positively highlighted how the Italian corporate venture capital plays an increasingly central role in the development process of the world of startups and innovative SMEs but also its still small size compared to European benchmarks.
In order to fill this gap, he said, “it is therefore essential to facilitate the birth of new entrepreneurial initiatives, especially in sectors and technologies with the greatest growth potential”.