The startups selected for the first edition of "I-Tech Innovation", the call launched by CRIF and Fondazione Golinelli for innovative startups in three strategic sectors, are now available. 7 projects passed the final screening of the selection among more than 200 applications received from Italy and abroad, respectively 3 in Fintech/Insurtech, 2 in Foodtech/Agritech and 2 in Life Sciences/Digital Health. Fondazione Golinelli and Crif will invest a total of 1 million euros.
Born from the synergy between two different realities, but complementary in terms of competence and strategic vision, the objective of I-Tech Innovation 2021 - which was initially promoted with the support of Digital Magics - is to favor the creation of new entrepreneurship with high innovative and technological content, investing in the Italian excellence sectors.
Drug Discovery Clinics srl, InSimili and NovaVido startups (Life Sciences/Digital Health), will be joined by Criptalia and Fintastico srl (Fintech/Insurtech), BiorFarm and Latitudo 40 srl (Foodtech/Agritech).
The startups will now be involved in G-Force, the G-Factor acceleration program from Fondazione Golinelli. The teams will have the opportunity to undertake a path of support to the development of their business models lasting 7 months from 12 April to the end of November, with a first intensive phase until July, and a second phase of remote follow-up until the end of the program.
The G-Force acceleration is unique: it is not purely academic but rather a process of support to the startup attributable to the "venture building" and is designed and built on the specifics and concrete development needs of each project and team. The training content and mentoring will be made by entrepreneurs, managers with an international profile, teachers, and the staff of G-Factor composed by entrepreneurs, managers, technology-scientific and financial advisors. Many topics will be addressed: market definition and its analysis, technological-scientific validation of products-services, design of business models and development plans, determination of the correct value proposition for future investors, setting the regulatory aspects at the national and international level, protecting the brand and intellectual property, learning the techniques to best present ideas and approach investors correctly. The program will introduce the startups to industrial partners of the national panorama and an audience of investors composed of investment funds, venture capital and business angels chosen ad hoc for each startup.
«Financial institutions, as well as insurance, utilities or large corporate companies increasingly feel the need to expand their offer of innovative products and services and for this, they pay great attention to the opportunities offered by new ecosystems that are based on collaboration with third parties to create value for the final customer. New technologies play a key role here, enabling the development of digital solutions to be further accelerated. The involvement of CRIF in the I-Tech Innovation project is based on the desire to provide selected start-ups with a clear strategic vision, more than thirty years of experience gained in the most competitive markets globally.» says Carlo Gherardi, CEO of CRIF. «Our ambition is to become a reference point for young companies in the Fintech, Insurtech, and Agritech sectors that want to undertake a structured growth path. The brilliant ideas that we gathered during the selection phase were many and it was very difficult to identify innovation projects with the greatest potential to be successful. Our role will be to help selected startups express their full potential to find their spot in the market. In this regard, we are also thinking of a community program with ad hoc initiatives extended to all the startups who participated in the call and who are interested in undertaking an accompanying path with CRIF».
For more information about startups and the I-Tech Innovation Program, visit the official G-Factor website
THE SELECTED STARTUPS
Life Sciences-Digital Health
Drug Discovery Clinics s.r.l.
Spin-off University of Turin
Drug Discovery and Clinic s.r.l. was born to bring to human experimentation a new compound called DDC#1 for the treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia and COVID-19. The drug candidate, the result of the research of excellence of the University of Turin in the pharmaceutical and clinical field, is the result of a process that lasted more than ten years and is positioned in a market of great innovation for both diseases. In the treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia, of which in Italy there are about 2000 new diagnoses every year (19000 in the USA), DDC#1 selectively induces the death of leukemic cells saving healthy cells. Compared to virus-infected cells, such as SARS-Cov-2 or its variants, in the presence of DDC#1 the virus loses the ability to replicate. The fact that the molecule can act as a broad-spectrum antiviral, its high potency associated with its low toxicity makes the candidate drug very competitive on the market.
InSimili
Spin-off University of Bologna
Insimili brings to the market a device that makes faster and more effective the process of selecting the drug through the creation, in laboratory plastic, of an environment similar to the tissues of the human body and therefore close to the one in which the drug will act. The start-up project, which uses patented technology and which in 2019 won the Start Cup competition Emilia Romagna, allows overcoming some limitations of the pre-clinical phase of experimentation of new drugs, as it proposes the use of camouflage environments of human tissues instead of the models currently used in vitro. The objective is to improve the drug selection process, reduce the time and costs of the entire process, limit in the pre-clinical phase the use of animal models, and in the clinical phase the testing of ineffective drugs on humans.
NovaVido
Independent start-up
Novavido was born from a research project developed over 10 years by the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa with the collaboration of the Sacred Heart Hospital Don Calabria in Negrar (Verona). The project is based on the use of polymeric retinal prostheses for vision recovery following retinal degenerations induced by diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. The idea was born from the work of two research groups, one of the Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Milan and one of the Center for Synaptic Neuroscience and Technology in Genoa, which has translated organic solar energy production technology into the field of biostimulation and demonstrated how semiconductor polymers are implanted in the eye of blind rats to replace photoreceptors, allow almost complete recovery of vision. The start-up aims to further develop the product, test it on humans and finally market it. Technology, innovative and revolutionary in its field, could improve the living conditions of thousands of people around the world.
Fintech/Insurtech
CRYPTALIA
Independent start-up
CRIPTALIA is a blockchain-based platform that combines peer-to-peer crowdlending as an alternative form of loan for Small and Medium Enterprises with a robot-advisor solution based on Artificial Intelligence to assist investors in the choice of the project. Today many companies have great difficulty in financing their growth projects and often obtaining loans is a long and laborious process. CRIPTALIA aims, through the use of artificial intelligence, to communicate immediately to those who request the loan if the latter will be accepted or not. How? The robot-advisor automatically downloads and analyzes the company’s financial statements through artificial intelligence algorithms, and those promoted are then evaluated by a team of analysts to advance the more and more the algorithm. The start-up operates as Mangopay’s agent.
Fintastico srl
Independent start-up
Fintastico has long been known as one of the leading Italian web portals for the search for digital and innovative financial services, with over 18,000 users and more than 70,000 visitors per month, and the only player in Europe entirely focused on fintech. Fintastico through its services allows consumers to choose and select innovative financial services that best meet their needs and suppliers to access a single distribution channel that allows them to contain acquisition costs. Leveraging expertise in the fintech landscape and their customer base, The start-up aims to move from a portal to a financial market business model to offer advice on financial products and remote onboarding services by 2022 and to integrate all-in-one personal financial management solutions by 2024.
Biorfarm
Independent start-up
Biorfarm is the first virtual agricultural community and is based on two pillars, small producers and end consumers. Adopt, monitor, taste: this is the start-up paradigm, where people and companies can adopt or give away trees, follow their cultivation online and then receive fresh products at home, directly from the fields to the table. The digital world thus allows us to create a real relationship between producer and consumer. In addition to adoption, Biorfarm is also a marketplace where you can buy farmers' products and receive them right away. Thanks to the Biorfarm model, farmers are given a fair price, on average 70% higher than the traditional supply chain, as well as a certainty of product placement and immediate liquidity. Thanks to the adoption system, the farmer knows in advance the quantity of product to be dedicated to this channel of sale and has the opportunity to request the early collection to meet expenses. The farmer also benefits from additional benefits, including practical economic support in the event of unforeseeable events and the possibility of using network services. The user who adopts the tree concretely supports farmers and their territories, contributing to a sustainable economic and social system and organic and environmentally friendly agriculture.
Latitudo40 srl
Independent start-up
With the growing demand for food, it is necessary to optimize agricultural production and Latitudo40 srl has created a fundamental work tool for the modern farmer: a fully automated unified data analysis platform capable of automatically extracting information from satellite images. The platform, removing technological barriers in the use of satellite data, allows the transformation of satellite images into geospatial information by offering the data that the farmer needs in the simplest way to interpret. Agrialitycs, through innovative machine learning and AI algorithms, monitors agricultural fields and supports precision agriculture by increasing production. The algorithms allow us to predict the yield of each field, identify the need for nutrients or irrigation, and identify the status of each specific crop or field. The data provided may also be imported into the farm management system and transferred directly to the connected agricultural machinery to increase the efficiency of the farm. The project was launched last year and today the platform is used by several farmers in Italy and abroad, with over 15,000 hectares of land monitored.
