Plug and Play announced on Monday it has opened a new office in Italy together with its newest corporate partners Esselunga, Lavazza, Tetra Pak, and UniCredit. The accelerator reported that office will service key partners in the region such as UniCredit, which is also joining Plug and Play’s Fintech Europe program in Frankfurt.
While sharing details about the new location, Saeed Amidi, CEO & Founder of Plug and Play stated:
“We are proud to open our first Food & Beverage Accelerator in the heart of Italy. Plug and Play was born twenty years ago in our Lucky Building, where Google, Paypal and Dropbox were born. We are especially excited to expand to Italy and connect leading Italian corporations with our international startups, while offering the country’s talented entrepreneurs access to our global programs.”
Alexandre Carvalho, Tetra Pak’s Global Director of Marketing and Customer Innovation Centers, commented:
“We started the partnership with Plug and Play in 2017 after a visit with customers to their headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. It had an enormous impact on the way we were looking at open innovation approaches and partnerships. Plug and Play has been instrumental in connecting relevant startups to well-established companies, We now have several projects with Plug and Play that will help us continue to drive our digital transformation.”
Plug and Play has created an innovation platform with over 10,000 startups and 280 official corporate partners. Plug and Play Italy plans on running two 3-month programs per year, accepting startups that are working on innovating the food and beverage space.