Amazing innovations at Swiss Venture Day

The day started with a short introductory remark by Christian Wenger, Chairman of CTI Invest. He spoke about a good example demonstrating the benefits of the platform. The example is Xeltis. Xeltis is developing synthetic biodegradable heart valves and blood vessels, enabling a completely new therapeutic category called Endogenous Tissue Growth. The company has closed a financing round of CHF32 million this week. Christian Wenger said: “Investments of CTI Invest members played a crucial role in the history of the company. Without these investments Xeltis would not exist today.”

The eight companies that pitched at the Venture Day were younger than Xeltis and are typically looking for investors for a seed or Series A round. However they had something in common with Xeltis. There products were amazing.

A good example is Ecker Technologies and their product called Gondola, an add-on rehabilitation therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease. The therapy of the company that has just won the StartCup Ticino helps patients to walk again. Some of the patients were even able to work again. The results were confirmed in several clinical studies. A video shows the effect of the treatment in an impressive way.

Ecker wasn’t the only company with an amazing product. Twingtec develops a new kind of windpower technology. A tethered wing harnesses the wind energy at variable altitudes. The mechanical energy of the Twing is transferred by the tether to the groundstation, where it is converted into electrical power. The whole system is transportable on a standard trailer.

Ecorobotix showed another fascinating product: an autonomous robot for weeding powered by solar cells and equipped with state of the art technology such as advanced weed recognition algorithms, fast robotic arm, advanced sensor technology, high energy efficiency, and wireless communications for easy control.

"Where can I buy it?"
It’s not a wonder that products like these arouse interest. This was especially true for the smart home solution of eSmart. One of the investors asked if it is possible to buy such a product – and yes it is possible. However eSmart is focussing on a B2B businessmodel and is quite successful. Several hundred apartments are already equipped with the solution.

In the case of FEMTOprint the demand was even higher than the founder expected. FEMTOprint has developed a table top device for micro machining. It is able to produce micro devices out of glass or other transparent substrates, integrating optical, fluidic and mechanical features down to the nano-scale in a single substrate. The original plan was to start selling the machine to academia and to address industrial customers later. But the interest from industrial companies for example from the watch industry was so high that the team decided to move on much faster.

The complete list of presenting companies can be found in our pre-event article. Members of CTI Invest can watch videos of the presentation on the website of CTI Invest.

The next Swiss Venture Day will be held at 17 March 2015.