The Italian Trade Agency (ITA) is the governmental bureau that supports the business development of Italian companies abroad and promotes the attraction of foreign investment in Italy. ITA has organized a national pavilion at InnoVEX hosting five startups, which provide examples of Italian creativity and innovation across sectors:
- Boatsandgo: The first metasearch algorithm to compare charter yachts, boat rentals, and boat-sharing deals. Users can compare deals from hundreds of sites and get the right boat at the right price, just as they are used to doing with Trivago for hotels or Skyscanner for flights.
- MyMoney: An innovative payment system, completely biometric and device-free, that aims to be fast, easy, and secure. MyMoney’s system is based on the recognition of fingerprints with FBI-certified readers, the highest security level on the market, and does not require a smartphone.
- TimelapseLab: An innovative video surveillance system for construction sites that helps project management, HSE monitoring, and documentation production. It combines the production of plug-and-play industrial devices, resistant to all critical issues, with a functional management platform for remote control.
- Travel Verse: A metaverse solution applied to the travel industry. Combining blockchain, digital twins, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and the Internet of Things allows travel agencies and tour operators to represent their travel offerings to customers in an innovative way.
- Visual Note: A revolutionary system that accelerates the guitar learning process. It utilizes a foil with LEDs directly applied to the guitar fretboard, a controller, and a mobile app to show where to put fingers to play a selected tune right on the guitar or on a mobile phone virtual fretboard.
Italy has a strong and dynamic ecosystem of universities, R&D centers, innovation hubs, and national and international firms, making it the leader in the EU in different engineering fields by number of scientific citations. Innovative SMEs and startups are an important reflection of such a dynamic ecosystem, representing a valuable feature of the national industry.
Italy is often recognized for its history, arts, and culture, as well as for the three “Fs” of fashion, food, and furniture, yet ITA Taipei is confident that Taiwanese companies visiting the Italian Pavilion at INNOVEX will start looking at Italy as a hi-tech country.
