Lombardy, Italy-based Soplaya, the digital platform transforming supply chains for the HoReCa sector, today announced the successful closing of its €6M in a Series A round, bringing its total funding to €22M to date.
The round was backed by leading investors Alkemia Capital, CDP Venture Capital SGR, Riello Investimenti SGR, and P101, with legal support from Michela Prisco, Partner at Pavia e Ansaldo.
Based out of Milan, Alkemia Capital is an independent asset management firm dedicated to identifying and nurturing value through strategic investments.
Giacomo Picchetto, Managing Partner of Alkemia, says, “Soplaya is a reality that is changing the rules of the game in one of the most strategic and least digitised sectors in Europe: the B2B agri-food chain. In a market still dominated by inefficiencies, it has built a scalable, sustainable, and high-impact model, which combines technology, logistics, and data.”
“This round marks not only a step of consolidation, but the beginning of a new phase of scale, in which Soplaya will be able to accelerate the technological integration of the entire supply chain, also thanks to the advanced use of artificial intelligence,” adds Picchetto.
The Italian company will use the new funds to accelerate its mission to automate manual processes, improve data-driven decision-making, and save time, money, and energy for food service professionals.
Soplaya: Specialised in procurement
Soplaya simplifies the sourcing process for hotel, restaurant, and catering professionals.
Mauro Germani, CEO of Soplaya says, “Thanks to this round we will be able to significantly expand the range of services offered, innovating a sector that is still strongly backward from a digital point of view: a restaurant entrepreneur, together with his staff, in Italy loses an average of 10-20 hours a week to find products, compare prices and quality, manage orders and payments in different and manual ways, record delivery notes and enter them in the inventory, run to the grocery store when products are missing, when they do not reach the minimum orders or when suppliers make errors in delivery, monitor the total food cost and per dish by retrieving data only when invoices arrive at the end of the month.”
“All this without the possibility of effective delegation or control of numbers. A critical situation that is no longer sustainable in a sector that suffers from a shortage of personnel and that needs a punctual control of numbers and entrepreneurial management to survive and prosper,” Germani.
The company’s mission is to create the most efficient, transparent, and sustainable B2B supply system in Europe by connecting restaurateurs directly with producers through a tech platform.
The company has built a community of over 3,000 restaurateurs and 500 suppliers, developing technology that transforms the supply chain for an efficient and smart sourcing experience.
This includes reliable, on-time ordering through a 24-hour app, access to both niche products and major food brands, unified billing, payment, and delivery six days a week, along with easy control of purchasing data.
In its initial years, Soplaya generated over 30 million in turnover and continues to grow rapidly, backed by prominent Italian venture capital funds, including P101, Azimut, Alkemia, and CDP Venture Capital.
