INNOVATION HUB SWITZERLAND: 51 STARTUPS BRINGING SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
From digital personalized learning and gamified digital therapeutics to authentication enabled by facial recognition as well as reduction of cement usage through CO2 capturing as a Circular Economy solution, Antimicrobial LED light technology and real time reporting in FinTech and Insurtech, Kickstart is engaging on different levels to drive innovation activities in Switzerland. Over 50 high growth startups from 11 countries are participating this year.
Zurich, July 22, 2020 — Since it was founded five years ago, Kickstart has become one of the largest European innovation platforms and has initiated over 120 pilots and commercial projects between startups, established organizations and companies from various sectors. “Despite COVID-19, Kickstart has received high-quality applications from over 55 countries and overall there has been a significant increase of deeptech ventures with the appetite to scale in Switzerland,” explains Katka Letzing, Co-Lead of Kickstart. “From September to November, the startups will have the opportunity to co-create in the form of Proof-of-Concepts, pilots and commercial projects with Kickstart partners, leading organizations and companies such as AXA, Coop, Migros, Swisscom, Mobiliar, ETH Zürich,City of Zurich, PostFinance, Credit Suisse and others. This year Kickstart is excited to bring on new partners, including Mövenpick, New Work SE, Energie 360°, Roche, Holcim Switzerland, Nespresso, Canton de Vaud and more. Startups will also have the opportunity to engage newly in the Romandy region next to Greater Zurich Area.
Startups participating in the 2020 program combine a high level of technological innovation with solutions that are intended to foster sustainable development. HealthTech startup Kaia Health, for example, offers digital therapeutics that create accessible, evidence-based treatments for a range of disorders. Food and Retail Tech startup, Vital Viodesigns, engineers and manufactures antibacterial LED technology for a growing range of commercial and residential applications. FinTech startup Keyless develops solutions for biometric, simultaneously secure authentication. Insurtech startup MotionsCloud ensures the processing of insurance claims in real time. Smart City startup Neustark is working on the reduction of cement by turning CO2 into carbonated elements in the building industry, and EdTech and New Work startup, Coorpacademy, provides personalized digital learning content for professional upskilling.
“Every year, Kickstart attracts startups that are leaders in their field. The program has given us the opportunity to work quickly and effectively with these emerging companies, to accelerate our own business ideas, to learn what this means for Migros and what benefits can be created for our consumers,“ says Eliana Zamprogna, CTO of Migros Industry. “The commitment of our organization has increased significantly over the years. Our employees have the opportunity to think about business, innovation and technology in different ways and at different speeds than they do in their day-to-day work. This has strengthened the leadership and collaborative skills of our organization.”
EdTech & New Work #KICKSTARTERS20:
BOOKR Kids (Hungary) is a unique reading-based edutainment tool, designed to engage and delight the youngest learners in reading.
Coorpacademy (Switzerland) disrupts Corporate Digital Learning with its premium hub content and Learning Experience Platform, used by global leading brands for all their employees.
Gravity Global (Switzerland) saves 90% of your Enterprise Learning cost.
HRForecast (Germany) provides BigData answers and AI-solutions for people and organisations to be prepared for the future of work.
Innential (Germany) is a data-driven corporate learning platform, creating personalised learning experiences for individuals.
Sharpist (Germany) is the outcome-driven platform for people development powered by digital coaching.
SkillGym (Switzerland) makes soft skills development scalable and engaging through AI-driven Digital Role Play to practice conversations that matter.
Time is Ltd. (Czech Republic) is an advanced analytical SaaS platform for data-driven business leaders with a holistic approach to organizational productivity, communication culture, and digital collaboration setup.
FinTech & InsurTech #KICKSTARTERS20:
Build38 (Germany)secures business in the APP world against online fraud and data breaches.
decentriq (Switzerland) aims to change how the world accesses data: We enable the use of sensitive data from other organisations while provably guaranteeing the confidentiality and security of these data.
Keyless (United Kingdom) is a deeptech cybersecurity company building the world’s first privacy-preserving biometric authentication and personal identity management platform. The Keyless Cloud Platform empowers businesses to embrace passwordless, protect their remote workforce and enable strong customer authentication with just a look.
LAMIE direkt (Austria) is a full-stack InsurTECH empowering corporates to create digital insurance solutions within their existing ecosystem.
MotionsCloud (Germany) helps home & car insurance companies to streamline & automate claims processes powered by AI computer vision tech modules. We cut claims cycle time to 3 hrs, cut processing cost up to 75% and improve customer claim experience.
omocom (Sweden) offers innovative and fully digital insurance solutions for circular economy platforms including renting, sharing, leasing, resale (P2P, B2B, B2C); this can increase trust between transaction partners and thus help such platforms to grow and become more viable
Ratyng (Switzerland) takes credit ratings from wall street to main street, helping companies find better business partners.
tilbago (Switzerland) enables creditors to efficiently and effectively collect debt online.
TIMIFY (Germany) is an online solution for online booking, scheduling and resource management for small, medium and large companies
Yova (Switzerland) offers investments that combine sustainability impact with attractive returns — everything is digital, easy to understand, and transparent.
Food & Retail Tech #KICKSTARTERS20:
Ai Palette (Singapore) helps companies in product innovation by predicting food trends in realtime using AI & machine learning.
Alpengummi (Austria) is the first natural chewing gum of the Alps, only made of renewable resources and therefore free of plastics, artificial sweeteners and other possibly harmful ingredients.
Boost Biomes (United States) is developing microbial treatments for food & agriculture to extend shelf life and increase crop yields.
Greendeck (United Kingdom) uses AI to help retailers and brands with price optimisation and competitor monitoring.
iSense (Switzerland) complements flavour artistry with sensory data, analytics and the first cloud-based flavour collection management system, simplifying your flavour operation and accelerating flavour choice.
livealytics (Switzerland) provides IoT and analytics as a service for municipalities, real estate, live marketing, retail space, and trade shows. The solution is easy to deploy and manage, captures various footfall metrics, and provides relevant analytics, benchmarks, KPIs, and recommendations
Novolyze (France) improves safety, quality and sustainability of food production.
Prognolite (Switzerland) supports restaurants in reducing food waste and optimizing staff planning by predicting future demand thanks to machine learning algorithms.
Vital Vio (United States) is a health tech company and the creator of single-diode antimicrobial LED light technology (non-UV) that is safe for use in homes, public places and industry to create environments that are inhospitable to the growth of bacteria, fungi, yeast, mold and mildew.
HealthTech #KICKSTARTERS20:
Kaia Health (Germany) is a digital therapeutics company that creates accessible, evidence-based treatments for a range of disorders including back pain, knee- and hip pain, and COPD.
Klenico (Switzerland) supports healthcare professionals and patients in diagnosing mental disorders.
mementor (Switzerland) develops digital health applications in the field of sleep medicine and related medical areas.
Pryv (Switzerland)is a ready-to-use middleware for personal data and consent management. Pryv offers a solid foundation on which businesses build their own digital health solution, so they can collect, store, share and rightfully use personal data.
SidekickHealth (Iceland) is a Nordic digital therapeutics company, providing support to people with a wide range of chronic illnesses — including remote monitoring, treatment adherence and disease-specific education — driven by AI and gamification, resulting in leading retention rates and proven to sharply boost health outcomes.
Uplyfe (Switzerland) is an AI-powered health companion that reacts on your behaviour in nutrition and exercise, analyses your symptoms to help you influencing your health in a new way.
Smart City & Technology #KICKSTARTERS20:
Animatico (Switzerland) creates interactive avatars for a seamless interaction with digital devices.
FAAREN (Germany) enables all car dealers to become car subscription providers and offer their vehicles through the FAAREN marketplace to end customers.
Greyparrot (United Kingdom) provides AI-based waste recognition software to monitor and sort recyclables at scale.
HeatNeutral (Switzerland) is the future of zero emission and climate neutral heat energy. We produce the worlds most efficient, cost effective and scalable heating system for homes and industry powered by CO2 neutral fuels.
InstaDeep (United Kingdom) develops AI products and bespoke solutions for enterprise clients focusing on decision-making systems that solve existing problems across a range of industries using advanced ML, Reinforcement Learning and Deep Learning.
MOBBOT (Switzerland) is a 3D concrete printing for sustainable infrastructures.
Neustark (Switzerland) developes a containerized solution to store CO2 in construction materials.
Peter Park System (Germany) transforms parking lots into mobility hubs by providing parking lot operators with automatic license plate recognition, cloud-based software and the integration of parking apps.
Intrapreneurship Drives Established Companies to Generate New Business Growth and Creates Sustainable Cultural Change
In addition to partnerships between startups and established organizations, Kickstart supports the advancement of innovation in companies themselves. Nine intrapreneurship teams, independent within the companies, will also be part of the 2020 cohort. Alongside Swisscom, Mobiliar, Migros, this year, new partners have been engaged with their internal teams, including PostFinance, Holcim Switzerland and Energie360°. “Without innovation there cannot be sustainable growth,” explains Alice Dal Fuoco, Innovation Manager at PostFinance. “To support the growth of our innovation activities we are delighted to collaborate with external innovation leaders such as Kickstart.”
Intrapreneurship #KICKSTARTERS20:
#digitalreal (Mobiliar, FinTech & InsurTech) is a measure by Mobiliar that is intended to raise public awareness around the topic of cyber risk.
Atendo (Holcim Switzerland, Smart City & Technology) aims to eliminate tedious work and create a digital link, where we are able to digitally extract material from tendering documents and/or blueprint plans within seconds and thereby enable a starting point into automating the offering process.
Check&Connect (Mobiliar, FinTech & InsurTech) offers on the one hand the possibility for SMEs to easily and cost-effectively assess the security of their own IT infrastructure and on the other hand, direct contact with experts and additional services enable SMEs to remedy identified weaknesses and implement preventive measures.
CliMate (Swisscom, Smart City & Technology) motivates people to live more sustainable, by providing a community-driven platform dedicated to environment-friendly challenges.
lab360 (Energie 360°, Smart City & Technology) creates the hydrogen energy future.
Ormera (PostFinance, Smart City & Technology) is a blockchain based meter-to-cash solution that automates the entire billing process of self-produced energy.
Roady (Swisscom, Smart City & Technology) helps to navigate your travel to the places that are to your taste and liking.
The Ginius Way (Swisscom, Food & Retail Tech) gives you time for the important things in life by taking care of your daily tasks and chores.
WoWMi (Migros, Food & Retail Tech) - The Beauty Timeout — is a platform which combines one-stop personalized beauty and wellness treatments with add-ons and complementary services within a holistic ecosystem.
Kickstart is a spin-off of Impact Hub Zurich, a globally connected community of entrepreneurs, techies, and creatives. The ecosystem innovation platform runs programs for startups, intrapreneurs, CEOs and established organizations, including a kickoff week in September and a six-week collaboration Sprint from September 30th to November 8th, during which the international teams will engage in Switzerland. Kickstart’s locations this year are the innovation space Kraftwerk in Zurich and Impact Hub Lausanne.
For more information, please contact:
Sasha Steinmann, Communication Manager
+41 77 529 63 26
press@kickstart-innovation.com
About Kickstart
Kickstart is one of Europe’s largest zero equity, multi-corporate ecosystem innovation platforms that runs a scale-up program for high-growth startups with the goal to accelerate deep tech innovation in Switzerland. Science and engineering-driven technologies have the potential to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. They require unprecedented collaboration between established organizations and the most audacious entrepreneurs out there. Kickstart is committed to build bridges and bring various organizations such as startups, corporates, cities, foundations and universities together. Each year, Kickstart brings up to 100 entrepreneurs to Switzerland to collaborate with key players for proofs of concept, pilot projects and other innovation partnerships. Additionally, through the intrapreneurship program Kickstart helps established organisations accelerate internal innovation.
Kickstart is a spin-off of Impact Hub Zurich and was launched in 2015 by digitalswitzerland. In 2020, Kickstart runs five verticals: EdTech & New Work, FinTech & InsurTech, Food & Retail Tech, HealthTech, Smart City & Technology; an Intrapreneurship program and the Circular Economy Initiative together with partner organizations across industries: AXA, Coop, Migros, Swisscom, Mobiliar, ETH Zürich, City of Zurich, Gebert Rüf Stiftung, Holcim Switzerland, MAVA Foundation, Mercator Foundation Switzerland, PostFinance, Mövenpick, New Work SE, Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE, Credit Suisse, CSEM, Energie 360°, Empa NEST, University Hospital Zurich, Panter, SATW, Swiss Healthcare Startups, Roche, Growpal, Ringier, Wenger & Vieli AG, Google for Startups, Nespresso, Canton de Vaud, Panter, WECOCO and more.
