Accelerating growth with Microsoft

The Microsoft for Startups program is a free, global program dedicated to helping B2B startups successfully scale their companies by providing them with access to technology including Azure and GitHub Enterprise, coupled with a streamlined path to selling alongside Microsoft and its global partner ecosystem. 

Four startups have recently joined the program. These are:

TONI digital 
With its insurance-as-a-service approach, TONI Digital enables partners to rapidly launch their own insurance product and leverage their brand and customer base while generating additional revenues. Thanks to its flexible insurance tech platform and partners, the company builds value networks to meet the needs of its distribution partners by focusing on lean and automated processes for everyone – customer, partner and internal systems. The dis-integrated value chain and automation efforts are resulting in scale effects and cost advantages. The startup is currently working with renowned brands and partners, such as PostFinance, Munich Re and TCS / Assista.

TONI will work closely with Microsoft’s engineering specialists to further optimize its insurance tech platform and collaborate with the Microsoft enterprise sales team to reach key customers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Planted
The ETH spinoff manufactures and commercialises plant-based meat products. Serving over 3,000 stores in the DACH region with its plant-based meat substitute products, Planted has since its launch in 2019 increased its production volume nearly tenfold and enlarged its product range. To support this growth, the company has moved into its own production facility. Further expansion, for instance, to France, is being planned.

Planted's entire value chain runs on Microsoft Dynamics 365 - from production to sales and distribution. This generates countless data points to foster the right and sustainable decisions. By participating in the Microsoft Startup Program, the company can keep its own IT department lean by implementing the integration of the merchandise management system with logistics companies in record time.

Duokey
Founded in 2020 in Lausanne, cybersecurity startup DuoKey is on the mission is to secure communication, documents, and data. The company provides security features for customers to confidently move sensitive workloads to the cloud while benefiting from strong security controls that meet internal and external compliance requirements. The DuoKey Key Management Service is based on innovative Multi-Party computation (MPC) that provides encryption services without relying on HSM (Hardware Security Module).

As a member of the program, DuoKey will accelerate development and commercialization through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Microsoft’s technical expertise and resources will boost DuoKey capability to reach a larger audience and help all customers to make their cloud journey while keeping their encryption keys under their sole control. 

Sulzer Schmid 
Zurich-based Sulzer Schmid is a technology innovator in the renewable energy inspection sector, focussing on wind turbines. The company developed a collaborative and cloud-based 3DX Blade Platform that integrates every aspect of the rotor blade inspection in one place and covers inspection planning, data processing, and report generation and long-term data analytics. In 2016, it deployed the first fully autonomous UAV flight; today, it has conducted rotor blade inspections throughout Europe.

Thanks to the ongoing support of the Microsoft team, Sulzer Schmid has managed to maximize the use of Azure and Power BI and develop a state-of-the-art software solution and intuitive dashboard for their 3DX™ Blade Platform. 

(RAN)