Filippo and Saverio Rev Up, Electrically Speaking

A friendship born in 2013 in class in Shanghai, where they wore masks for pollution reasons, the one between Filippo de Nittis and Saverio Pulizzi who now, spurred by the Covid-19 emergency, have become startuppers and have launched an e-commerce platform for the sale of electric bicycles, scooters and hoverboards.

Filippo and Saverio, who became buddies in Shanghai while attending Bocconi's double degree China MIM masters program with Fudan University, developed their idea between Rotterdam, where Filippo works in the marketing of Unilever's global HQ, and London, where Saverio works in the analytics department of Facebook. Both, thinking about their return to work at the end of the emergency, found themselves with the dilemma of finding a safe and sustainable way to commute, avoiding crowds on public transport.

"Looking for scooters online we saw that there were no specialized sites," says Filippo, who also graduated CLEAM at Bocconi. "We reasoned together, seeing an opportunity, and by putting together my marketing skills and Saverio's programming skills, we set up our platform, Lushtech."

The site has been online since mid-April. "At the moment the producers are mainly Asian but we are scouting European producers. And we're hoping for a further boost from new incentives for sustainable mobility," explains Filippo, who tells how the various products have been named after scientists and innovators, from Galileo to Einstein, from Steve Jobs to Elon Musk, "because we like to think that those who buy them contribute to progress and are innovators and change-makers too."