Equippo wins start-up competition at START Summit15

It was one of the highlights of the START Summit15 in St. Gallen: The start-up competition which took place on Saturday. The finalists were chosen by investors who met more than 30 Swiss, German and Austrian start-ups during the “Meet the investors” session on Saturday morning. Numerous active investors were present for example representatives of Redalpine, b-to-v, Zühlke Ventures or SICTIC. They selected five finalists that had the chance to pitch to the audience and to the jury. The jury chose the overall winner Equippo. The start-up from Zug received CHF10’000.

Equippo is a global e-commerce platform for heavy equipment such as cranes, dump trucks, loaders or asphalt pavers. The platform brings together select manufacturers, dealers, leasing companies and other trusted sellers of heavy equipment with buyers from all over the world, including markets like South America, Russia, and Poland. Equippo has a unique technological innovation - the Equippo final price calculation engine that makes it easier to deal internationally: tariffs, transport and logistics specific to buyer’s region are already included in the price displayed.

There were two reasons to select Equippo as winner: The start-up was founded by a very experienced team and the team has not only the intention to go global; Equippo was globally active from the beginning.

Winner of the audience award is the fintech start-up Advanon. Advanon is an online platform where SMBs looking for short-term financing can sell their invoices to financial Investors. Through the easy-to-use platform, SMBs can improve their cash balance instantly. Investors, on the other hand, get access to an alternative type of short-term investments. Unlike traditional factoring services that acquire all invoices from a seller Advanon is offering a flexible service as businesses can sell invoices when and as they need it.

The three other finalists of the competition were: Expertiger, Gymhopper and Wealth Arc.