Our CEO at the ITA Demo Day in Munich

On 21 October, Plug and Play DACH and the Italian Trade Agency (ITA) brought nine Italian startups to Munich for the ITA Demo Day. Our CEO and co-founder Niccolò Lapini gave the keynote, as Bella&Bona is a Plug and Play portfolio company.

The event took place at smartvillage Bogenhausen in Munich, with founders, investors, corporate leaders and mentors from the European innovation scene in the room. It opened with welcome remarks from Sascha Karimpour and Fabian Wulfrath from Plug and Play Europe, and Konstantin Klettke from Plug and Play DACH moderated the afternoon.

The programme also included talks from Plug and Play and the ITA, a panel discussion and plenty of time to network.

Niccolò opened the afternoon by telling the story of Bella&Bona: how we started in Munich, why we cook in our own kitchens, and how our ordering app and delivery work together to bring fresh lunch to offices. His slide showed the idea in six words: order, cook, deliver, review, forecast and improve.

For him, this one was personal. In his words, as an Italian he is proud to see the ITA invest in Italian founders through acceleration programmes around the world. Bella&Bona wants to be part of it, and he plans to apply to the programme's trip to Silicon Valley.

After the keynote, nine startups from ITA's flagship programme pitched their solutions, from AI and cybersecurity to legaltech, healthtech, foodtech, edtech and hospitality: Deepelse, Uplift, Cyberating, fraind.app, PlazaTech, Sirius Game, Keplera, pluma and ALFRED. They had spent a month in Munich with Plug and Play, meeting investors and potential customers, with one goal: bringing their business to the German market.

Thank you to Plug and Play DACH, especially Konstantin Klettke and Julian Benjamin Huschitt, for the invitation, and to the ITA for the great collaboration. Thank you to the nine founders for sharing their ideas, and to everyone who joined us in Munich. We look forward to seeing these startups grow.