Inditex launches venture capital for tech and sustainable startups

Spanish fashion giant Inditex has announced the launch of a new venture capital as part of efforts to finance textile innovations and advance its own sustainability goals.

The Zara parent company has assigned the management of the investment mechanism to venture capital firm Mundi Ventures, which is currently overseen by its founder Javier Santiso, who is also a current board member of Prisa and Fnac Darty.

Mundi Ventures has already invested in the likes of Klarna, Bolt Tech and Citibox, as well as Infinited Fiber, which Inditex has also had a stake in since March.

According to a report by El Confidencial, Inditex has entrusted the firm with managing a capital fund of 50 million euros, which is to go towards the share capital of companies that align with the group’s ‘Sustainability Innovation Hub’, to which the fund will be associated.

The goal is to enable Inditex to strategically form a curated list of emerging companies with the potential to contribute to driving them forward under its renewed sustainability roadmap.

It comes as part of a strategic plan introduced by the fashion giant in July 2023, in which it put an emphasis on sustainable fibre innovation, an element that is to play a decisive role in Inditex’s progress towards a more sustainable business model.

In this plan, Inditex saw its role as helping in the scaling of technological and textile innovations via the development of “more than 200 start-ups” with which it collaborates.

It is this same mindset that will play into the capital fund, with the first move under the initiative to be a significant stake in US cellular agriculture company Galy, which was already revealed during the Inditex General Shareholders’ Meeting in July by CEO Óscar García Maceiras.