Expo effect, but not only. There is an industry where more and more startups flourish and proliferate, often successfully, and it is the Food sector, certainly driven by the strong driving force of the Universal Exposition in Milan, which revolves around the theme of planetary nutrition, but which also represents the relaunch and evolution, which could define 2.0, one of the most classic and undisputed excellences of the Made in Italy:i.e. food.
A growth, that of Food, witnessed by the interest of credit institutions and business incubators, as also certified by the declarations of the Innovation manager of Intesa Sanpaolo Giuseppe Capetta for which "Food, together with Fashion and Luxury, is one of the sectors on which we focus the most".
After all, out of the 530 businesses that participated in the startup initiatives of the Turin banking group, 120 belong to the agri-food sector and many of them have raised the necessary funds through venture capital. The project too Start Lab launched by Unicredit speaks clearly in this direction, over the course of a year the proposals belonging to the Food area have gone from 4% to 8% of the total.
Speaking of venture capital, it's hard not to mention a reality like LVenture Group, led by the Founder of Luiss Enlabs Louis Capello and among the most active in our country. According to Capello, “Technologies are revolutionizing the food sector and our consumption habits in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago”.
We are facing new business opportunities that give rise to new services. As Capello explains again “it's not just about e-commerce but also about completely new services which are having, among other things, an important impact on employment. Let us think, for example, of the phenomenon of home restaurants, social eating or home chefs, which allow a person with a passion for cooking to transform their hobby into an income thanks to the visibility and means offered by the web".
But there is no better way to explain the boom in a sector than to cite the numbers: according to CB Insights surveys, Venture capital investments in Startup food in the US market would have tripled in the last quarter of 2014, compared with the previous three months.
A trend that, with different proportions and certainly taking advantage of the long wave of the Expo, but also, more generally, a renewed attention for food and for its origin and quality, is increasingly gaining ground in Italy too, favored by The most flexible business model of startups and their ease of understanding by investors.
Remaining on LVenture, the startup accelerator has in its portfolio numerous companies in the sector, from WineOwine to Pubster, via AppEatIt, RS (Risparmio Super) and Moovenda, making food one of the sectors that receives the most funding and the most results in the processes of acceleration together with ICT, Cleantech for the development of green technologies and life sciences.
Among the investors who bet on agri-food startups are also popping up big names in the industry: Danone, Granarolo, Bolton alimentary, up to Barilla and Coop. It is the agri-food sector itself, therefore, that sees the potential in the innovations, with the increasingly declared interest in keeping one of Italy's oldest excellences in step with the times.
