For the sixth year running Forbes Italia, the Italian edition of the international business magazine, has selected one hundred names representing the best of national youth entrepreneurship. A community of innovators that is now enriched by 100 new personalities, divided into 20 categories, capable of changing the country with their ideas: from fashion to technology, from healthcare to sport, finance, music and entertainment.
"Young women and men whose courage and enterprise are revolutionising the way we live, work, have fun and eat," writes Forbes Italia in the digital article accompanying the publication of the print magazine. This year's '100 Number Ones' are "startuppers, managers, artists, athletes and scientists who have had the courage to invest in their ambitious projects."
Among them, as in previous years, Forbes has also chosen several promising young entrepreneurs who are developing their business projects within I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino. This year, for the first time, the under-30 talents selected are predominantly female: Federica Busani and Rachele Didero, founders of Cap_able, included in the five most promising teams in the Consumer Technology category; Camilla Cecilia Conti, Co-Founder & COO of AdapTronics, in the Manufacturing & Industry category; Andrea Provino, CTO of Anubi Digital, in the Finance category.
The textile technology of Cap_able
"Fashion and high-tech: a meeting with a Berkeley engineer and a conversation on privacy and human rights gave birth to the clothing startup Cap_able," Forbes Italia reports, "whose garments do not allow facial recognition by surveillance systems". Cap_able, a young fashion-tech company pre-incubated at I3P, aims to raise awareness on the importance of privacy protection: to do so, it makes clothing that, through a patented technology, manages to prevent the automated reading of biometric data. That is, to confuse facial recognition cameras by preserving the anonymity of the wearer of the garments, who is thus registered in an incorrect category, such as an animal.
Rachele Didero, Co-Founder & CEO of Cap_able, was born in 1996. Creator and designer, she developed and patented a fabric to prevent facial recognition while studying between Milan, New York and Tel Aviv. In 2022, she won the ADI Compasso d'Oro Prize, the oldest and most influential international design award; she was also included by StartupItalia in its list of over 100 innovators "who made a difference in 2022 and are ready to make a difference in 2023". Her research continues thanks to Cap_able and her Ph.D. from Politecnico di Milano and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Federica Busani, Co-Founder of the same age, holds the position of Strategy & Business Development Lead for the young company. She started her professional career in the Netherlands, where she first came into contact with the world of start-ups: from that moment on, she embarked on an exciting journey in the fields of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, eventually launching her own company. "Cap_able aims to change the way people look at the clothes and accessories they wear, bringing a completely new and deeper attitude to the fashion industry," Busani explained during a previous interview with Forbes Italia. "One of Cap_able's goals is to find new solutions and new areas of application of technology, also to continue to make people think about an issue whose urgency is too often underestimated."
AdapTronics' sustainable logistics
AdapTronics is a deep tech start-up, part of the ESA BIC Turin community, that produces adaptive mechatronic devices for more sustainable logistics, for Earth and space applications. The devices unlock unprecedented grabbing capabilities of objects of any shape, size and material thanks to a proprietary spin-in technology that can turn any interfacing surface into an electrostatic gripper with sensing capabilities, minimal energy consumption, no heat dissipation and target-object predisposition requirements: an enabling technology for in-orbit servicing and space debris removal.
Camilla Cecilia Conti, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer (COO) of AdapTronics, was born in 1994 and holds a master’s degree in Energy Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. She has worked in R&D in GE Renewable Energy, then attained a Ph.D. with honors in Aerospace Science and Technology from Politecnico di Milano. She leads the execution part for the development and implementation of the product, as well as actively contributing to the vision and growth of the business idea.
A few months ago, at the end of 2022, AdapTronics had already gained the spotlight thanks to the two awards it received at Premio 2031, Italy's most important entrepreneurial competition: first the Romagna Tech award, for the start-up's proprietary technology, then the UniCredit Start Lab special prize, for its commitment to making the logistics sector more sustainable. Moreover, in December AdapTronics won the My Start BCN 2022 competition, promoted by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona in collaboration with I3P.
The cryptocurrency custody of Anubi Digital
The digital platform of Anubi Digital, start-up founded in 2020 and incubated in I3P since 2021, is designed to help an ever-growing and aware public to own cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other intangible assets in a secure and profitable way, through a regulated approach to decentralised finance (DeFi). Its core activities include: passive or active custody of digital assets through DeFi's best protocols; executing large orders quickly and reliably; offering a Digital Wealth Management suite with specific tax and notary services.
In November 2021, at the age of 22, developer Andrea Provino - already a blogger on current IT topics such as blockchain, machine learning and data science - joined the Anubi Digital team and became its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Today, he is in charge of further developing the start-up's technology, to introduce new features to be made available to customers - more than one hundred worldwide - and to meet the needs of a growing number of institutional subjects.
"Today I celebrate an important milestone that I did not chase but achieved: make the Forbes Italia Under 30 list. A secondary effect emerging from the intense work of the last few years, spurred by endless curiosity, motivated by the desire to surpass oneself, every day," commented Andrea Provino. "While of ephemeral joy, may this goal be a witness to the correct path taken. Now head down, and back to work."