Maritime Ventures is sponsored by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. A project aimed at digitalising and enhancing Italy’s marine and port-logistics sectors, with plans to create ten new businesses over the next three years.

Fundo. one, Maritime Ventures' first start-up Fundo. one, Maritime Ventures’ first start-up The start-up, created as part of a venture building initiative, is a platform that facilitates access to financing for the nautical sector Fundo.

one, Maritime Ventures’ first start-up The start-up, created as part of a venture building initiative, is a platform that facilitates access to financing for the nautical sector Maritime Ventures, the system initiative launched about a year ago by CDP Venture Capital and managed operationally by Cariplo Factory and Bridgemaker, which brings together leading financial and industrial investors such as Fincantieri, PSA Italy, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Neva and Friulia, with the support of institutional partners such as the Municipality of Genoa, the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region and Confindustria Genova, and in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Centre, announce the launch of Fundo.

one, the first start-up created as part of its venture building programme. Fundo. one is an artificial intelligence-based platform designed to respond to one of the most urgent needs identified by market analysis: facilitating access to financing, incentives and public tenders in the nautical, logistics-port and shipbuilding sectors for SMEs in the supply chain.

Only 31% of SMEs apply for public funding (€396 billion in 2024) and less than two in ten SMEs (16%) use supply chain finance instruments (€594 billion in 2024). The situation is no better in the specific nautical sector.

This is highlighted by an analysis conducted in the first few months of Maritime Ventures’ activity on over 45 companies in the supply chain, which identified six priority areas for innovation for these businesses: these include regulatory complexity, traceability, the digitalisation of organisations and communication between stakeholders. Fundo.

one was created with the aim of responding to these needs thanks to an AI-native platform, designed and trained by industry experts, with quick registration, defining the company’s investment objectives, enabling automated and continuous search for calls for proposals, simplifying each stage of the application process, followed by management and reporting support in a single dashboard, breaking down barriers to access to subsidised finance and reducing time and costs for SMEs in the nautical sector.

In particular, Fundo. one offers a system that allows users to immediately identify relevant calls for proposals, with constant alerts on new opportunities, to improve the success rate of applications.

The platform is constantly updated with all the regulations governing calls for proposals and all previous successful cases, in order to automate as much as possible through AI agents, with automated reminders for submissions and deadlines, and the option of guidance from Fundo. one experts. The Fundo.

one platform will continue to be enhanced with new features covering access to other financing options for SMEs, starting with supply chain finance, facilitating access to and management of confirming and reverse factoring of invoices for SMEs in industrial and complex supply chains such as maritime ones, with launch scheduled for 2026.

Just 14 months after Maritime Ventures was founded, we are proud to present our first venture to the market. With Fundo.

one, we are taking the first step in an ambitious project and receiving positive feedback on our venture building model: a streamlined process that develops start-ups in series, starting from concrete needs that emerge from the market to develop and prototype digital solutions that are tested on the market to launch only what is really needed.

Maritime Ventures operates with the dynamism of a start-up and the solid support of some of the country’s most important industrial, financial and institutional players,” said Enrico Noseda, CEO of Maritime Ventures and chief innovation officer of Cariplo Factory, in a statement. “I would like to thank all the project partners who have made a fundamental contribution to this important milestone.

” SMEs operating in the nautical, port logistics and industrial components sectors complain that it is difficult to identify the opportunities for tenders and funding available to them, in addition to the complexity of regulations and bureaucracy to be dealt with. This risks slowing down innovation in a crucial sector for our country. Fundo.

one aims to be the tool that facilitates, supports and accelerates the process of enabling all SMEs to access new financing efficiently. All this has been made possible by the excellent work carried out by the Maritime Ventures team and the support of the project partners, whom I would like to thank once again,” adds Andrea Giustina, CEO of Fundo. one.

(in the photo). Maritime Ventures’ goal is to create 10 new companies in three years to meet the growing digital transformation needs of Italian SMEs that develop components and services in the shipbuilding, recreational boating, cruise ship and port logistics sectors.

These newly established companies will be the subject of subsequent equity investments by CDP Venture Capital, through the Boost Innovation Fund, for a total of approximately €30 million, which could generate an additional effect on the market, bringing total investments to approximately €70 million.

Maritime Ventures has permanent operational offices in Genoa and Trieste and collaborates with Cariplo Factory and Bridgemaker for the management of venture building operations. Was this article useful to you? A small donation helps us keep producing independent content.

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