Global applause to celebrate winning startups

Over 500 startups from across the EU and its associated countries were evaluated online by more than 60 experts from the agrifood industry to select the 2024 cohort for the EIT Food Accelerator Network Paris program. The startups convinced the jury, among others, with their potential to disrupt the food industry Out of the 58 startups that joined the 2024 cohort, 10 were accepted for the topic Next Generation of Plant-Sourced Solutions. Among them are three companies from Switzerland.

Fabas is a Zurich-based startup that has been producing exclusively regional food based on organic pulses together with around two dozen organic farmers, thereby promoting the sustainable use of local farmland for direct food production. Gaia Tech from Bern is an ETH spinoff offering a new approach to upcycling agricultural sidestreams into bio-compounds and added-value ingredients for cosmetics, food, and feed manufacturers.Their proprietary extraction technology is currently used to create active ingredients from olives. The third Swiss startup is Kidemis, founded in 2023. The startup developed a proprietary fermentation technology that allows to convert side streams into affordable, SDG-compliant, and high-quality nutrition for farmed seafood. Their plant-based ingredient aims to replace fish biomass, also known as fishmeal, in current feed formulations for aqua farming. 

ConcentrAid thrives in UCL EdTech Labs accelerator
St. Gallen-based startup ConcentrAid developed a digital platform that enables its users to sign up for work sessions in which they can connect with other users via video and motivate each other to stay focused during home office or while writing a scientific paper. In April the team was selected for the UCL EdTech Labs accelerator program in London. Currently, the ConcentrAid team is exploring the efficacy of digital co-working platforms during the training phase. Joining UCL Edtech Labs provides the avenue to achieve this mission. The 12-week non-profit program provides training and mentorship from world-leading researchers and highly experienced mentors in education technology. Every member has access to a-illion-dollars worth of free and discounted services that are hand-picked to help businesses scale. The experts are from the leading organisations and institutions with unrivalled levels of understanding in the learning and technology sectors. The accelerator has also cultivated an online and real-life community of peers happy to share their knowledge and support the participants during and after their journey in the program.

INCAPTEK wins the AdMaCom award in Berlin
Last week some of the brightest minds in advanced materials gathered at EINS - an open co-working space for sustainable innovation at TU Berlin - for the AdMaCom 2024 Demo Day, the grand finale of the Advanced Materials Competition (AdMaCom), a 3-week accelerator program for startups in advanced materials. The hybrid and equity-free accelerator program offers startups tailored mentorship from their extensive INAM network of experts, direct investor advice and IP-guidance. The Courroux-based startup INCAPTEK, which develops drug coatings for medical devices with a controlled drug release function in the patient's body, was among the selected startups for this year’s batch and was crowned as the overall winner of the grand Demo Day.  

Goodwall - the only Swiss startup among the Times Top 100 EdTech Companies
Geneva-based startup Goodwall has made it to the innaugural list of World's Top EdTech Companies of 2024 TIME and Statista. For this study, Statista gathered and analyzed data from over 7,000 companies to identify the 250 companies changing the field of educational technology. The ranking is built on two pillars: financial strength and industry impact. A company received scores in each of these dimensions, which were then combined into an overall score. Goodwall scored 74 points, putting it in the 32 rank. The company supports 2 million youths in 150 countries to build skills and connect to opportunities via its app that enables experiential learning and gamification. The company partners with corporations, organizations and governments to develop programs to help grow and nurture its talent pool.

Partnering startups from Zurich win 15th Innovation World Cup
Co-developed by Zurich-based startups truvami and Miromico, the truvami nomad XS is currently the lightest Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) solar-based geolocation sensor-hub on the market that provides precise asset positioning and environmental data, all powered by solar energy. With their truvami nomad XS, the partnering team won the 15th Innovation World Cup in Hannover, the world’s leading competition for IoT, Wearables and DeepTech start-ups and scale-ups. The prize included a cheque of 10,000 Euro, exclusive business connections with international leading tech corporates, potential investors and partners, as well as free access to production labs, testing facilities and technical support. 

(Press releases / SR/ RAN)
Image: ©INAM - Innovation Network for Advanced Materials