Wine in Action, the LifeGate Way program for innovation and sustainability in the wine sector, is underway

The Italian wine sector is in excellent health and is therefore a sector in which startups flourish:Wine in Action helps them grow.

• Wine in Action is LifeGate Way's business acceleration program dedicated to startups in the wine sector.
• Through lectures, workshops and a training course designed specifically for the wine sector, Wine in Action is dedicated to companies that have the aim of doing business in the name of environmental and social sustainability.
• The path can be accessed via announcement:Applications open June 25, 2024.

According to the data, this is a good moment for the Italian wine sector:compared to 2021, revenues increased by 67 percent, with a boom in visits to wineries and accommodation facilities wine oriented.According to Federvini, in general, Italian producers have closed the last few years with a overall increase in turnover by 14.2 percent.Having said that, however, there is still ample room for improvement.LifeGate Way, the sustainable startup ecosystem of LifeGate, aims to give new businesses the tools to grow and, at the same time, to carry forward a business model sustainable business.With the program Wine in Action, second chapter later Women in Action which will be followed by Water in Action, focuses on organizations that want to tackle the environmental and social problems of the wine sector in an innovative way.

The objectives of the program Wine in Action of LifeGate Way 

The initiative, free and equity free, aims to promote the growth of innovative startups and to facilitate their collaboration with investors, industry experts and other stakeholders, thus helping to build a more resilient future and prosperous for the sector.This is an intensive course that involves more than 100 hours of training training, coaching and mentoring dedicated to the sector, support for founders in developing a corporate culture and leadership human-centered and sustainable.All this thanks clearly to frontal lessons, but also at meetings, workshops and moments of comparison.

Wine in Action is aimed at both startups that a scaleup who operate in the wine sector and develop innovative and sustainable solutions, but also ad cross-industry companies who want to be part of the change and support the development of the selected realities.Access to the program is via tender: you can send your applications from June 25th at the end of August 2024.The September 15th the finalist startups that will participate in the 7 October, during Milan Wine Week, will be announced Pitch day at the prestigious Palazzo Bovara in Milan.This means that they will have the opportunity to present their innovative ideas in front of a jury made up of prominent partners, industry experts and investors.The selected ideas will access the actual acceleration process, which will then begin in November.

Wine in Action is developed by LifeGate Way in collaboration with Milano Wine Week and thanks to the support of various partners:Business angels golf association, ToSeed, beeco, Underdogs group, Digital innovation days, Winelivery.

The areas of action:technologies, processes, marketing and more

The environmental challenges involving the wine sector are full-blown, with global warming forcing vineyards to migrate further north and extreme weather events, such as drought and hailstorms, which risk ruining production overnight.

The action areas of the program cover several aspects of doing business In the wine sector, starting from development of technologies which allow optimal use of resources, with a consequent reduction in environmental impact and improvement in yield and the quality of the grapes.Also crucial vineyard management through monitoring and control systems and, clearly, the actual winemaking and production phase:the project includes training sessions on new technologies and processes to improve the quality of wine and theproduction efficiency.

But there is also room for social challenges, starting with the gender issue.According to theIstat, The 30 percent of sommeliers in Italy are women, but few are able to truly get to the tops of the cellars.Although the wine world is much more female than in the past, the gender gap in the sector is still tangible.Between prejudice and family life, women in the vineyard are still heavily penalized.Italian wine businesses managed by women are around a third of the total, but most of these are considered small:in fact, they cover only 21 percent of the national agricultural area dedicated to viticulture.

Wine in Action will examine aspects related to the world of promotion and communication, leveraging digital tools for marketing and thedata analysis until the use of the blockchain to ensure traceability and transparency of the products.There will clearly also be a focus on food and wine tourism, still ignored by 17.5 percent of wine companies:participants will try their hand at creating innovative experiences to attract tourists and methods to promote wine-growing territories.