Prominent visitors and a lot of activity at the Swiss Pavilion of the Mobile World Congress

From Monday 24th to Thursday 27th of February was held GSMA's Mobile World Congress 2014 in the capital of Catalonia. The industry-defining event gathered a record breaking 85'000 attendees from 200 countries. It was the opportunity for more than 1'800 companies to showcase their products. For the first time Switzerland was officially present with a Swiss Pavilion, a joint operation by Swiss Global Enterprise, the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) and Alp ICT the High Tech Cluster.  

For this exceptional event a "More than Chocolate" campaign was put into place to promote Swiss Mobile Start-ups at the Swiss Pavilion. As you discovered recently on our website 19 innovative Swiss Mobile Start-ups seized this opportunity to showcase their mobile solutions in areas such as the Internet of Things (Qipp), M-Health (Sanovation), mobile Life-saving solutions (Uepaa), collaborative commerce (Kireego), Mobile marketing for brands (Cooala), sales (Pitcher), mobile gaming (GBanga), safer cloudcomputing (SixSq), mobile monetization (Echovox), energy saving technology (InnovaRadio, ActLight) and tourism monitoring (EDSI-Tech).

After an already busy first day, the momentum grew stronger on Tuesday as the morning pitches of the mobile start-ups gathered a growing public around the Swiss Pavilion. The same morning arrived Mobile World Congress Live TV crew as well as Swiss TV and various national print media. An interview of Sanovation's founder, Daniel Lawniczak was broadcasted by the RTS' Nouvo recently "La Santé se bouge". 20 Minutes had also the opportunity to meet the swiss entrepreneurs and interview them. Various articles have been published in French and German. A short list of important articles and TV shows was complied by Vital Meyer of CTI in his blog.

Needless to say a lot was going on the Swiss Pavilion. Tuesday ended with the Swiss Day organized by Swiss Global Entreprise at the CTTI (Catalonia Centre for Technology and Information). During the evening, every start-up had the opportunity to present its project to a panel of experts from Wayra, Indra and Telefonica. The evening ended with interesting keynotes related to the challenges of future connected cities and the Internet of Things.

Another highlight of the Swiss Pavilion was the visit of Felipe de Bourbon, the Prince of Spain to whom Stefan Zanetti of quipp explained the revolutionary service of his start-up. The Prince wasn’t the only famous visitor. The Swiss Ambassador in Spain, Mr. Thomas Kolly, arrived on Wednesday during the morning's popular round of public pitches. The Ambassador had the chance to speak with the entrepreneurs and learn more about their projects. Wednesday afternoon and Thursday were again very active days for the start-ups with lots of networking and business meetings going on.

At the end of this Mobile World Congress week, it is safe to report that Swiss Pavilion was a successful operation in terms of media coverage, business and networking for the 19 mobile start-ups present in Barcelona. Moreover the Pavilion became the meeting point of Swiss entrepreneurs visiting the Mobile World Congress. From the comments collected during the 4 days, they all look forward to next year's Swiss Pavilion. Because Switzerland is so much more than Chocolate.