Finalists of Prix Strategis announced

Awarded every year for more than 20 years by the association HEC Espace Entreprise, Prix Strategis is steadily expanding and willing to assert itself as the Swiss entrepreneurship Prize. Prix Strategis was designed to promote promising start-ups at a key moment of their existence in a financial, mediatic and strategic point of view. Since the 20th edition the Prix Strategis is open to all start-ups throughout Switzerland.

More than 50 Start-ups applied for the 22^nd edition of the award. The five finalists were announced yesterday.

The finalists in alphabetical order:

Bcomp develops and patents technologies allowing the fabrication of eco superior products from natural fibres. The products of the company replace aluminium, carbon- or glass fibre composites and make structures more efficient in terms of weight, rigidity, shock absorption, and damping. The first customers of Bcomp were from the sports industry. Today Bcomp’s materials are used in a brod range of products.

eSMART: Reducing energy consumption lies at the heart of eSMART. The service allows electricity, water and heating consumption to be analysed at a glance. The connected devices can be managed via smartphone or tablet. This way customers can keep tabs on their energy consumption and costs.

InSphero is a leading supplier of organotypic, biological in vitro 3D microtissues for highly predictive drug testing. The company currently counts all of the top ten global pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies as customers and is helping them to implement its patented microtissue technology in their development work-flow.

QualySense develops high-end solutions for grains, seeds and beans sorting. The unique and proprietary devices enable sorting grains, seeds and beans reliably by biochemical and/or geometrical properties. The sorting devices, the QSorter series, generate benefits in quality control, process optimization, and risk management.

rqmicro provides a novel system for the rapid detection of water- and foodborne pathogens. The main USPs are superior sensitivity and a time to result of under one hour. Compared to the classic cultivation-dependent methods that require days for a result, rqmicro's approach yields results in a significantly shorter time with higher accuracy and lower detection limits.

The award ceremony will be held on 28 April. More information on the website of Prix Strategis.