Italy was one of the first European countries to be hit hard by the covid-19 disease as the coronavirus swept the world and it seems to have helped spark a growth mindset among its leaders to catalyse its innovation capabilities through venture.
Italy-based phone operator TIM (Telecom Italia) has committed €60m to the UV T-Growth fund, while last week this column noted the launch of the Primo Space fund to back spinouts and startups from the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana; ASI) among other sources of entrepreneurs.
The Italian Private Equity, Venture Capital and Private Debt Association (Associazione Italiana del Private Equity, Venture Capital e Private Debt – AIFI) will be relaunching its project on corporate venture capital from September.
TIM is likely to be eyeing this keenly as one of the few substantial local corporations with a longer-term track record in CVC (it has had multiple CEOs of its CVC unit at least). Showing its innovation strengths will likely also be helpful given private equity firm KKR through its infrastructure fund next month will look to agree its offer to acquire about 49% of TIM.
In June, TIM hired Carlo Tursi as CEO of its TIM Ventures unit – following last year’s departure of Mario Di Mauro – and one of his first actions was to commit €60m to UV T-Growth in partnership with VC firm United Ventures’ founders Massimiliano Magrini and Paolo Gesess.
UV T-Growth will invest in late stage entrepreneurs mainly in Italy and Europe targeting the smart city, smart home concept, such as 5G-related cloud solutions, internet of things, edge computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, cyber security applications and on-the-move payment systems.
The new fund will also be open to other Italian and foreign institutional investors and will be managed independently by United Ventures.
Giovanni Ronca, chief financial officer at TIM, said: “TIM decisively relaunches its presence in the venture capital market alongside a partner with standing, namely United Ventures.
“With the launch of UV T-Growth we are committed to promoting the growth of 5G in Italy, which will be the enabling technology of the next few years for citizens and businesses. In addition, we are focusing on a broad range of investment verticals linked to digital.
“Venture capital is the right tool to accelerate innovation. We are convinced that with this initiative we will encourage greater competitiveness, boosting new investments and confirming our support for digital development in Italy.”
It might even encourage greater social mobility, given economists’ finding the richest families in 1427 were the same as in 2011 and the economy had stagnated even before covid-19 hit.
