Italian Angels for Growth (IAG), the largest business angel network in Italy, recently presented the IAG INDEX, an indicator that aims at monitoring the vibrancy of the Italian start-up ecosystem in terms of investment opportunities for business angels. It also helps to monitor the trends in the Italian seed venture capital.
In 13 years of activity, IAG has analysed over 5,500 start-ups and has finalised over 85 investments through club deals. IAG business angels has invested more than € 33 million in companies that overall have raised additional € 166 million from investors.
The index, which is calculated on the IAG’s deal flow, is based on 5 parameters: industrial sector, stage of the fundraising round, valuation, geographical area and gender diversity in the team.
The main results – as of June 2020 – are the following:
Sector differentiation is balanced between four main macro-areas: deep tech, digital, life science and fintech. 38% of the analysed start-ups are related to the digital area, which includes several sub-sectors such as: B2B software, marketplace, fashion, food & agritech, turism, etc. 24.7% of the analysed start-ups and about 50% of the finalised investments are related to start-ups of the life science sector, and in particular biotech (pharmaceutical research and innovative biological materials) and medtech (mainly medical and robotic instruments aimed at revolutionising medical treatments and processes).
Most of the IAG’s deal flow is related to start-ups looking for seed capital (64.6%). That means start-ups with a product / service already tested on the reference market, and therefore looking for capital to start sales and create an organisation. A lower number of start-ups (18,9%) contact IAG for a series A round. These are companies in their scaling-up phase, with a validated business model and KPIs to present to investors.