Zest Group is one of the leading players in Europe and is dedicated to fostering growth in the innovation ecosystem. The company, based in Rome, is the market leader in Italy in terms of early-stage investments, startup acceleration, and scale-up support. It offers a wide range of high-tech and entrepreneurial value services, providing a complete 360-degree experience.
Zest is the strategic partner enabling Italian companies and institutions to transition to the 5.0 era through Open Innovation and corporate Venturing projects. With offices in Rome, Milan, and Turin, Zest was born from the merger between Digital Magics and LVenture Group, the Italian venture capital pioneers with over 20 years of experience in the market.
Zest Group
Describing the reality of Zest are its numbers, starting with the 250 startups in its portfolio, but also the 7 accelerators active in as many tech trends: IoT, Fintech, PropTech, Cleantech, Traveltech, Digital and AI. Zest is not just a startup but a player that looks at the entire innovation sector, hunting for winning projects. For this reason, it has completed two joint ventures.
The first is Apside, 50% owned by Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest banking group and one of the largest in Europe. It aims to invest €15 million. The second joint venture is Open T, 50% owned by Tinexta, an Italian company providing services in digital trust, cyber security, and business innovation. Based in Italy, it is present in 12 countries across Europe and Latin America. The agreement includes investments of €5 million.
The first exit was announced on May 7th: Zest exited the startup Futura with a 15x return on investment, completed within the €14 million Series A round raised by the startup.
To find out more about what Zest does, we met with Noa Segre, Head of Value Creation, and Filippo Agostino, CEO & Co-Founder of 2Hire, one of the startups in Zest’s portfolio, which, thanks to the system developed to manage vehicles remotely in real-time, has obtained funding of more than €6 million.
