Startups and venture capital, encouraging news from the Italian market

According to Infocamere and Anitec-Assinform, the number of startups and innovative companies was up by 8.6% compared to the same period of the previous year. And the productivity of small businesses also runs

Startups and small businesses, digital is driving their population growth and profits. The latest monitoring carried out by Anitec-Assinform and Infocamere is clear. With data reaching up to October 2022, in Italy there are 8,416 startups with the Ateco code associated with the ICT sector, with a growth of 8.6% compared to the 7,749 recorded at the end of the third quarter of 2021. In addition, startups and innovative SMEs continue to generate more margins, even if the challenge of non-operating costs remains: for each euro of production in 2021 they generated 32.3 cents of added value (32.2 in 2020) against 22.5 cents in the non-ICT segment ( 19.5 in 2020).

Progress has also been made on the venture capital side: according to theEY Venture Capital Barometer 2022 was the record year for Venture Capital in Italy for investments in startups, since the milestone of two billion euros in investments raised was exceeded (+67.3% compared to 2021). Looking at geography, the territorial distribution remains stable with more than half of the companies concentrated in three regions: Lombardy which accounts for 29.4% of ICT startups and small businesses, Lazio (14%) and Campania (8.4% ). Followed by Emilia-Romagna (6.8%), Veneto (6.8%), Piedmont (5.6%), Tuscany (4.8%), Puglia (4.8%), Sicily (3.9%) , Marche (2.1%), while the other regions represent shares of less than 2%.

It’s not over. The good news also comes from the productivity front. The productivity indicators by company, in fact, signal a progressive improvement especially for innovative ICT startups and SMEs active in the fields of digital activity from the most dynamic markets, such as 4.0 and Digital Enabler. Overall, startups with deposited balance sheets produced goods and services for a total of 2.5 billion euros in 2021 (1.6 in 2020). An ever-significant share of innovative ICT startups and SMEs is in an embryonic stage of development. A development that is finally accelerating in 2021 compared to the previous two years, as confirmed by the overall, average and median production dynamics in more dynamic demographic growth in the last year especially in the 4.0 activity strands and other digital technologies and solutions.

For Paul Ghezzi, general manager of InfoCamere, “the report confirms that we are facing a healthy universe, bearer of dynamics capable of helping the country make the leap in innovation and digital transformation. The quality of the data analysis of complex and evolving phenomena such as that of innovative startups and SMEs – summarized by the information on the portal startup.registroimprese.it – is increasingly central to intercept the needs and developments of technological innovation in the country”.