Italy has 11 million people eligible for GLP-1 drugs. Almost none of them are getting help using them. Holifya just raised €2M to change that.

Milan-based digital clinic closes a €2M round led by CDP Venture Capital’s Next Age, doubling down on a bet that the obesity drug boom needs infrastructure, not just prescriptions.

Ozempic and Wegovy changed the conversation around obesity almost overnight. What they didn’t change is how hard it still is, in Italy, to actually get on one of these drugs and stay on it. Less than 1% of the roughly 11 million Italians who qualify for GLP-1 therapy are currently in treatment — a fraction of the 2% in Germany and over 4% in the UK. Of the patients who do start, nearly a third quit within a month, and more than half are off the drug within a year, usually because nobody managed their side effects, their dosing, or gave them a real clinical pathway to follow.

That gap is what Holifya has been building against since 2023. The Milan startup, which bills itself as Italy’s first digital clinic dedicated to the pharmacologic treatment of obesity, has now closed a €2 million round — €1.6M in equity, €0.4M in debt and grants — to push further into it.

Who’s in the round

The raise was led by Next Age, the “Silver Economy” vertical of CDP Venture Capital’s National Accelerator Network, alongside returning backers AC75, Growth Engine, Doorway, 20Fund (via GP Serra Elizabeth Falk) and Zooga VC. A group of angels joined too, including Micol Fornaroli, Pier Francesco Rimbotti, Tommaso Gamaleri, Duccio Vitali and Matteo Mainetti.

Growth Capital advised on the transaction. It brings Holifya’s total raised since founding to over €2.5 million — modest next to Oviva (Switzerland/UK, $400M+ raised, Series D led by Kinnevik in January) or Calibrate in the US ($160M+), but Holifya is positioning itself as the closest Italian equivalent to that model.

What the product actually does

The pitch isn’t “telehealth for Ozempic.” Holifya’s core asset is a data layer: a Patient Support Program that pulls in up to 3,000 biomarkers per patient — genetic, blood chemistry, behavioral — and feeds them to an AI system that flags dropout risk and possible side effects to the treating physician, who validates and adjusts the therapy. Screening for eligibility takes under 48 hours, against a multi-month wait inside Italy’s national health service.

The company claims patients on its program lose roughly twice as much weight as those on the drug alone (-17% vs. -7.1% over six months) and stick with therapy up to three times longer than the market average — numbers pulled from its own base of 3,000+ patients treated to date, worth watching as third-party validation rather than taking at face value.

Why the timing matters

2025 was the inflexion point on the regulatory side: Italy’s Parliament formally recognised obesity as a chronic, relapsing disease, which reframes how it gets treated and reimbursed.

Combine that with the GLP-1/GIP wave, and Italy is sitting on one of Europe’s largest untapped patient pools — and, per co-founder and CEO Alessandra Cestaro, one of the markets with the most room to build “the fundamental role of AI in supporting physicians” into how that pool gets treated.

Stefano Molino, who runs CDP Venture Capital’s accelerator fund, framed the bet similarly: the value is in AI “improving the quality and continuity of care” for a disease that’s chronic by definition, not a one-off prescription.

What’s next

The capital is earmarked for three things: growing the tech and data team to keep building the AI models in-house, expanding B2C distribution and partnerships across Italy, and scaling the clinical team to keep pace with patient growth. Holifya says it wants to be at 60+ people by the end of 2026, with clinical hiring as the priority.

The company has already passed through Endeavor Elevator Italy, Plug and Play and A-Road, B4i – Bocconi for innovation programs — worth noting for the Milan ecosystem crowd, since it puts Holifya in the same accelerator lineage as a chunk of the city’s current startup cohort.