Drive for growth

Dear reader

Poke bowls are a good way to quickly eat something healthy and tailored to individual taste. No wonder that the bowls, which originally come from Asia, are also a trend in Switzerland. Kaisin is one of the trendsetters in this country. The catering company, which was founded only in 2017, has just opened its 10th location and already employs more than 100 people. When it came to financing, the founding team of four relied on bootstrapping. There are no investors on board.

In contrast, vegan bakery chain Bakery Bakery attracted a particularly large number of investors – about 700 – in a crowd investing campaign via Oomnium in which it raised CHF 1.4 million. This means Bakery Bakery’s impressive growth can continue: it already has more than 100 employees at six locations and now wants to expand further in Switzerland. Find out which other start-ups were able to secure crowd funding in our overview.

ODNE and Alithea Genomics are using traditional venture capital to take the next expansion step. Alithea has secured CHF 2.8 million and ODNE CHF 4.8 million; part of the money will flow into expansion into the US for both start-ups.

There was also good news on the investor side. Backbone Ventures closed its 5502 Fund as planned at EUR 20 million. The company intends to use the fund to invest in approximately 30 start-ups founded by migrants or other under-represented groups such as women. The focus is on start-ups in the pre-seed and seed phase in Switzerland and Germany.

SaaS start-up Inventsys is already in the scale-up phase. It enables water suppliers, energy service providers and municipalities to digitalise their maintenance planning and overviews. The fast-growing company has now received a growth loan from UBS.

There are different paths to growth and more and more start-ups combine ambition and skills to grow strongly and secure the necessary support. This support does not always have to be monetary in nature. Innovation Sandbox from canton Zurich supports AI start-ups in implementing their solutions in a controlled framework. As part of the initiative, Parquery was not only able to test its clever car park management solution in Frauenfeld, but thanks to the support it now also has a report with best practices that other interested municipalities can use themselves for car park management. A second round of Innovation Sandbox will be announced by canton Zurich in April.

Next week you can meet us at the Start Summit in St. Gallen. We have our own stand and will be present on both days.

Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora 

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch