Rosso closes €3M seed to digitise Italy's blood donation system
Rosso, the blood donation platform operated by Ema Health, has closed a $3M seed round to modernise how Italians give blood and plasma. The round is led by 360 Capital, with backing from CDP Venture Capital, Angelini Investments, Ciapa Rosso, Fintech Partners, H-Farm, and Studio Necchio.
The company was co-founded by Filippo Toni, born in December 2006, and Chiara Schettino, born in 2001 — making this likely one of the largest seed rounds ever raised by founders this young. Toni is just 20 years old.
Rosso launched in 2023 and offers a consumer app that lets donors find nearby collection centres, book appointments by smartphone, and track their donation history. Its companion product, EmaOS, is a management tool for transfusion centres and associations to handle scheduling, communications, and donor retention.
Italy's blood supply system is broadly self-sufficient for red blood cells, with over three million donations recorded in 2024 from 1.67 million donors. But plasma remains a weak spot: the country covers only about 60% of its immunoglobulin needs domestically, and demand has grown 57% in the past decade.
Much of the donation infrastructure still runs on phone calls, paper forms, and manual scheduling. Rosso argues that digital tools can help recruit and retain donors — especially younger ones — at a time when generational turnover is a growing concern.
The capital will fund a nationwide expansion of digitised collection centres, growth in active donors on the platform, and team hires.
Blood donation is a regulated, trust-dependent process. Rosso's success hinges not on app downloads but on deep integration with transfusion centres, associations, and regional health systems. Data security, operational reliability, and the confidence of medical staff all matter more here than in a typical consumer app.
Scaling in healthcare also means navigating fragmented local governance across Italian regions, each with its own protocols and procurement habits.
Italy's blood supply chain is one of Europe's largest volunteer-based systems, yet it remains largely analogue — making it a textbook case for the kind of public-infrastructure digitisation that is increasingly attracting early-stage capital. The backing of CDP Venture Capital via the PNRR-funded Digital Transition Fund underscores how EU recovery money is filtering into niche healthtech bets, while lead investor 360 Capital's involvement through its 360 Digitaly fund points to growing conviction among Italian VCs that regulated, trust-heavy sectors can still yield venture-scale returns.
Read more: economyup.it
