Ganiga, EUR 2.5M of which EUR 1M via Smart&Start Italia
Ganiga reports €2.5 million in total funding, but only €1.5 million of it is an equity round. The other €1 million comes through Smart&Start Italia, an incentive managed by Invitalia, according to Tech.eu and Teleborsa on 20 October 2026. On Invitalia's own page, the standard terms are a zero-interest loan covering 80 per cent of eligible costs. Neither report says in which form the €1 million reached Ganiga, or when. On our arithmetic, the Smart&Start share is 40 per cent of the total.
The equity round was led by Vivenda, an Italian contract caterer that serves more than 50 million meals a year, according to Teleborsa. London-based NextSTEP and three business angels also took part. The company says it will focus first on contract catering alongside Vivenda.
Ganiga was founded in the province of Pisa by Nicolas Zeoli. It began with robots that sort waste and says it has sold more than 300 devices to airports, shopping centres and large businesses in Italy, Japan, Australia and other European countries. Its newer product, HooolyFood, uses cameras above waste containers to identify discarded food without weighing it. The company says it was built in under a year and already runs on more than 30,000 meals a day. Zeoli says: "you cannot reduce what you do not measure."
The limits: the device and meal figures are the company's own, no valuation or revenue is published, and neither report says Vivenda is a customer of HooolyFood. Teleborsa headlines the round as €1.5 million, Tech.eu as €2.5 million; both give the same split.
What the money pays for: according to the company, growing the technical and commercial teams, developing HooolyFood and its data platform, and increasing recurring revenue. The reports do not say which part of the €2.5 million pays for what.