19 April 2013 – Milan, Italy. For the past four years, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, the largest Italian retail bank with a presence throughout Europe, has been running the “INTESA SANPAOLO START-UP INITIATIVE".  Faced with the threat of shrinking economy and low of competitive edge of its existing and prospective corporate clients often in the business of low margin manufacturing, the initiative is part of bank’s mission to foster innovation in different industrial areas and across territories where it operates by nurturing growth of new companies and facilitating transfer of best practices to current clients.

The process starts with a call for business plans and ends with a roadshow of selected companies in major cities in Europe and now in US.  One must appreciate the subtle irony of the fact that a large bank manages to run the entire selection and valuation process through a free and crowd-sourced due diligence.  This means that by the time a new company is invited to join the roadshow, its business plan and technology has already been vetted and pressure tested by literally tenths of industry experts.

This year’s Biotech and Helthcare focused event took place on April 17-18 in Milan with the usual investor arena format.  Among others, start up pitches included companies active in eHealth (Medigenia), surgical robots, exoskeletons, new drug candidates (Akron Molecules), lab on chip technologies for the discovery of novel antibodies (Mindseeds Laboratories) or electroecuticals (3Brain) and personal genomics (Flylife).
 

Start Up initiative   http://www.startupinitiative.com