Warrant Hub Enters the Capital of Crowd-Investing Platform Opstart

Warrant Hub (Tinexta Group), a leader in strategic and financial consulting for innovation, digital transformation, and sustainable business development, yesterday announced an investment in the capital of Opstart, among the leading players in the national crowd-investing market.

At the same time, the two companies are kicking off a strategic and commercial partnership. With the transaction, which took place in a capital increase, Warrant Hub becomes the owner of a 9.1 percent stake in Opstart.

Read more about the partnership between Warrant Hub and Opstart and find the latest business news of the day with the Born2Invest mobile app.

Opstart ended 2021 with revenues of €1.36 million, EBITDA of about €160,000, net income of about €70,000, net cash of about €940,000, and equity of €1.8 million

Opstart, founded in Bergamo in 2015 by Giovanpaolo (CEO) and Alessandro Arioldi (CTO), in November 2019 had cashed in a financing round underwritten by Aleph Finance Group Plc, an investment holding company that owns Pairstech Capital Management, which so far owned 4.527 percent of the capital, while the main shares are held by Giovanpaolo Airoldi (21.29 percent), Diego Zanchi, Andrea Cantù and Alessandro Airoldi (with 17.33 percent each) and PMI Top srl (6.42 percent).

The latter is a private capital investment holding company that is financed by equity crowdfunding campaigns, launched in February 2020 by Davide Cigolini and Alessandro Tesio, who own minority stakes in the capital and participated by Directa Sim and the same Alessandro and Giovanpaolo Arioldi and Diego Zanchi. Then, in March 2022, Banca Valsabbina signed an agreement to acquire a 9 percent stake in Opstart.

Giovanpaolo Arioldi, ceo of Opstart. commented, “The entry of Warrant Hub in Opstart is a source of great satisfaction and represents a very important partnership for our future. Today in Italy very few companies are still using crowd-investing tools to raise capital, despite the fact that these are often a faster and easier way, in terms of bureaucracy than traditional channels. It is therefore essential to work in synergy with a company like Warrant Hub, so that companies can learn about all the tools available to them to grow and consolidate, in a 360-degree integrated strategy between tradition and innovation.”

Thanks to the new partnership, Warrant Hub can further enrich and differentiate its offer to companies in the area of corporate finance

The transaction conducted by Warrant Hub is part of the Open Innovation program promoted by parent company Tinexta to capture innovation, talent, and the most advanced ideas from the startup world, putting the resources and expertise of its subsidiaries at the disposal of innovative entrepreneurial projects.

The initiative aims to support the conception of new digital services and solutions in the areas of digital certification, cybersecurity, innovation, and business development, as well as to bring increasingly competitive, efficient, and sustainable tools and strategies to the market.

“Opstart has captured our attention for its ability to introduce revolutionary innovations in its market, positioning itself as the fintech reality with the widest variety of services integrated in a single platform,” said Fiorenzo Bellelli, CEO and founder of Warrant Hub (Tinexta Group).

Thanks to the new partnership, Warrant Hub can further enrich and differentiate its offer to companies in the area of corporate finance, integrating it both with current Opstart solutions, for example for crowd-sourced financial advance of credits from subsidized finance or for supporting the growth of startups also through equity crowdfunding operations, and with the exclusive use of new services in fintech logic developed in synergy by the two partners.

At the same time, the deal supports the growth of Opstart by supporting, in particular, the development of the lending division, the strengthening of the workforce, and the start of a process of internationalization of the business. Warrant Hub has been 12 percent owned by Intesa Sanpaolo since last November 2022, when the bank subscribed to a reserved capital increase in the company, with Tinexta remaining at 88 percent.

Tinexta spa (formerly Tecnoinvestimenti) is the group listed on the Euronext Star Milan segment and provider of a wide range of digital services for businesses such as digital signature and identity, customer onboarding, electronic invoicing, PEC as well as cybersecurity,

On the subject of m&a, we recall that in May 2022 Tinexta had acquired, through its subsidiary Queryo Advance, 100 percent of the web agency Nomesia srl, which specializes in digital support for various business functions, especially on the commercial side, and also in May 2022, through its subsidiary Visura, a leading provider of telematics services geared to the Italian professions, had acquired Turin-based Sferabit srl, which offers a suite of management software dedicated to the market of Professional Orders, Conciliation Bodies and Arbitration Chambers.

Also that same month last year, it sold its credit information and management division, which offers business information and technical-estimative services in real estate, to CRIF. In October 2021, on the other hand, a partnership had been announced with German private equity firm Bregal Milestone, which had put up €100 million to acquire in a capital increase a 16.09 percent stake in Tinexta’s subsidiary, InfoCert, the Italian market leader in digitization and dematerialization services and one of the leading Certification Authorities at the European level for certified e-mail services, digital signatures and digital storage of documents.

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First published in Be Beez, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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