VENTURE CAPITAL: INITIAL INVESTMENTS FOR THE TECHSHOP €1,2M TO TILEDESK AND HLPY

18 May 2022 | News

Two rounds of €600,000 each to Tiledesk from Puglia, which has developed an innovative open-source customer service architecture and to hlpy, a pioneering roadside assistance digital provider
Home » News » VENTURE CAPITAL: INITIAL INVESTMENTS FOR THE TECHSHOP €1,2M TO TILEDESK AND HLPY

Milan, 18 May 2022 – Two months after completing the first closing for the Techshop Primo fund, the SGR founded by Aurelio Mezzotero and Gianluca D’Agostino announces two seed rounds of €600.000 each in Tiledesk and hlpy, two Italian software companies which have developed disruptive technologies, both with a huge potential of international expansion.

This double round accelerates the activity of the Fund, which, after receiving support from CDP Venture Capital and other important individual investors, is working on a further expansion of the raise up to the €50M mark. The two deals show Techshop Primo’s focus on Italian high potential B2B digital startups and with international ambition. The fund’s initial investment tickets are between €500.000 and €1M, allocated in the seed stage, as in the case of Tiledesk, or in a slightly more mature pre-series A stage, as in the case of hlpy.

Tiledesk Srl was founded in 2020 by Andrea Sponziello and Andrea Leo in Galatina, at the heart of the Apulian Salento. Lately, Michele Pomposo, a manager with a valuable international background within the Neomobile group, has joined its leadership team. Tiledesk is an advanced customer service platform based on building dialogue between a company and their customers through messaging, with multiple interfaces and service levels: chatbots, messaging apps and human operators. The ease of integration of Tiledesk’s software and the smart support provided allow enterprises to increase the satisfaction of their customers while increasing the ROI in a future proof CS solution based on messaging. It is developed entirely in open source, a strategic choice that allows the community to develop new features autonomously and, at the same time, for enterprises with specific needs to customize the software on-prem.

The market for chatbots and technologies for advanced customer service is forecasted to be over 100 billion dollars by 2025. A sector that has seen the rise of global companies such as Zendesk, Freshworks and Intercom alongside a string of specialized players. Tiledesk’s approach is based on an integrated “full-stack” architecture combined with a modular logic; such architecture allows the enterprises to choose whether to adopt the entire service suite or to pick single modules, easily pluggable with third-party software and solutions.

hlpy Srl, founded in 2020 in Milan, was born out of an idea of Valerio Chiaronzi, Graziano Cavallo and Enrico Noseda. Since February 2021 it has been offering insurance companies, car manufacturers and car rentals a B2B2C solution that allows car drivers to activate a roadside assistance request in less than 60 seconds via their smartphone and to receive real-time information on the assistance process. hlpy started operations in Italy by sealing agreements with major players in the insurance vertical, in the rental sector and with car manufacturers; by the end of 2022, it will have managed over 40,000 assistance missions. The hlpy business clients can rely on a network of over 650 rescuers managing a fleet of over 3,000 emergency vehicles throughout Italy and all digitized through the hlpy platform. Techshop invested €600,000 in a round which was also participated by primary angel investors and some existing shareholders of hlpy.

Techshop retained Laward, led by Pierantonio Luceri, as legal counsel on the Tiledesk deal, while for the hlpy investment the Fund was supported by Marco Ciurcina, partner at Studiolegale.it.

We are happy to have completed our first investments just two months after the Fund’s kickoff, founders Gianluca D’Agostino and Aurelio Mezzotero comment, “because they are the outcome of thorough scouting and screening of the B2B startup arena started in September last year. Tiledesk and hlpy are two startups pretty unique in their value proposition, with well-focused software products, in businesses undergoing strong technological and behavioural changes, such as in the corporate customer service, or anchored to archaic service models, as in the case of roadside assistance.”

Andrea Sponziello, Tiledesk CEO, explained: “The investment by Techshop is an important milestone for us to hit the goals set ever since the beginning, in the journey to become a key player in the customer messaging and inbound marketing space. This funding will allow Tiledesk to strengthen the team, improve the go-to-market, broaden our open source community and expand internationally. We firmly believe that Gianluca and Aurelio’s mentorship will be instrumental in designing and executing a sustainable growth strategy.”

hlpy CEO Valerio Chiaronzi commented– “We are extremely happy to have an investor like The Techshop seating now beside us. Thanks to their network and global vision, we are confident of receiving the necessary support in this strong acceleration phase. The economic resources of this round will be useful to engage in the scale-up of the business into other European markets and accelerate the R&D and product development activities. This year, we have plans to expand across borders and lunch new services to complement our value proposition.