Number of innovative Italian startups nears 10K, grows 23% since 2017: report

The number of innovative startups in Italy rises from 7,866 to 9,647 between 2017 and 2018, which is 22.6% than last year.

Italy is experienceing surge in the number of innovative startups and their employees over the past year. The number of innovative Italian startups are moving towards 10,000, with just over 52,000 people employed and less than 1 billion euros in total turnover.

The data on the monitoring of the third quarter of 2018, was carried out by MiSE and InfoCamere, with the collaboration of UnionCamere. The full report in Italian can be downloaded here.

Innovative startups are characterized by significantly larger partnerships than other new joint-stock companies: on average each startup has 4.3 members, compared to 2.1 among other new comparable companies.

In the last 12 months, the Italian workforce of startups has grown more than proportionally compared to the increase in the number of companies: currently startups in Italy employ 52,512 operating members and employees, which is up 33.2% compared to the same date in 2017.

Almost a quarter of the innovative startups present at national level (2,368 units) are located in Lombardy, which confirms the most populous region, followed by (1,027 companies), and Emilia-Romagna (919).

In the provincial ranking, Milan is in the lead with 1,669 startups, followed by Rome (916) and Naples (330), which for the first time skips Turin from the third place. Trieste, Trento and Ascoli Piceno are at the top by number of startups on the total number of new businesses.

A little less than six years after the launch of a dedicated, governmental strategy (legislative decree 179/2012), innovative startups represent about 3% of all Italian companies with less than five years and that have an active status.

Italy’s Innovative Startup Employment Stats

The data for the 2017 financial statements currently recorded by the Chamber system cover just under 60% of the startups recorded at the reporting date (59.5%). However, the sample available already suggests how in 2017 the total turnover of startups has exceeded one billion euros: the current sum, in fact, is around 960 million euros, which is destined to increase with the acquisition of data not yet detected.

In terms of employment, at the end of June 2018, there were 3,875 innovative startups with at least one employee (298 more than at the end of March), equal to 40.2% of the total (against 38.1% of the previous survey).

This is reflected in an increase in the total number of employees (13,187 people, 448 more), and a slight decrease in the average number of employees, now equal to 3.4, compared to 3.6 three months before (the other corporations with less than five years present a significantly higher average, equal to 6.2 employees per company).

At the end of the third quarter of 2018, the shareholders of the 9,498 innovative startups for which this figure is available, exceeded 40,000 (40,886), 1,561 more than in the previous quarter (+ 4.5%).