PARTNERSHIP Italy - UK

PARTNERSHIP | Winter 2019 06 Interview with TechItalia:Lab’s Co-Founder, Pier Paolo Mucelli An Italian tech-community in London I taly and the UK have always been complementary countries with long-standing economic relations: the UK is a key international market for Italy; while Italy is one of the UK’s most important trading partners. Since the 17th century, a large number of Italian people moved to the UK, some of them becoming successful entrepreneurs in the field of food service, fashion and art. The most recent advent of technology and digitalisation introduced another kind of “Made in Italy” to export: tech intellectual products. Nowadays, young Italian professionals and competitive Italian start-ups aim to establish themselves in the UK as an intersection market of the two countries’ tech supply and demand. The Italian start-up ecosystem has been expanding in the past years, counting 8,800 start-ups in 2018 (500 more than 2017) in the United Kingdom, which is amongst the leading countries in global digital technology investment, ranking in the top three countries for total capital invested in the digital technology sector. In 2018, the British tech industry turnover was £170bn, and tech investments were £6.8bn, of which £2.2bn just in London. Furthermore, there are currently over 200 active incubators and 160 accelerators in the UK supporting more than 3,500 new companies per year. The presence of accelerators and several technological events has definitely made London one of the fastest growing epicentre for start-ups in the world. In this scenario, TechItalia, the most important community of Italian entrepreneurs and professionals based in London, plays a fundamental role as a bridge between these two realities. Thanks to the commitment of Pier Paolo Mucelli, Founder & CEO at eOffice, and his team, it is possible to admire a virtuous mechanism to match Italian innovating ideas with the development opportunities that the UK offers in the tech field. ICC: How was TechItalia born?