CHF 50,000 for two innovative beekeepers

Thursday was a busy day for the start-up scene in Ticino. The day started off with the jury session of the StartCup Ticino. In the afternoon the first Swiss Venture Day Ticino took place – co-organized by CTI Invest, and in the evening the award ceremony of the StartCup was held at the Aula Magna of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI).

The day revealed how vibrant and diverse the start-up scene in Ticino already is. The list of the companies that pitched to the investors at the Venture Day can be found in another article. In addition Christian Brand presented his start-up DAC System in a short pitch. DAC System is a high quality supplier of monitoring systems for broadcast and network operators.

Christian Brand is a very experienced founder, an advantage he had in common with quite a lot of other entrepreneurs who pitched at the Swiss Venture Day. It is also true for the two founders of Bee Helpful – the team that won the StartCup Ticino. They have entrepreneurial experience and in addition they are beekeepers – the perfect profile for their project.

Winner of StartCup Ticino 2015: Bee Helpful
Bee Helpful is addressing the problem of dying honeybees. For years, honeybees around the world are dying off with greater frequency, with a dramatic social impact, because honeybees are not only producing honey: pollination is important for the whole human food. Worldwide beekeepers face the problem by hive chemical treatments without a definitive result. The two founders of Bee Helpful developed a new class of hives that ultimately improve the health of honeybees, rising the pollination capability while reducing the hive chemical treatments. Since spring 2015 they are running a field test with the research institute Agroscope. A patent should be granted in the next months.

The other four finalists of the StartCup 2015:

On Timerepublik members offer their skills, talents and services to other members in exchange for units of time.

CLARA is the revolutionary smart jacket that incorporates ultra bright turn signals and breaking sensors to improve cyclists and pedestrians' safety.

Life Glove is a wearable device to assist lay people in performing an effective basic life support in case of cardiac arrest.

TrusTTechnology produces intelligent self-assembling tents suitable for: Rescue; Events; Private; Commercial and Hotel.

The StartCup Ticino competition is an initiative of the USI-SUPSI Start-Up Promotion Center (CP Start-Up) aiming at fostering entrepreneurship in the territory. The purpose of the competition is to reward the most innovative and promising business projects, conceived or realized in Ticino in recent years. The award is supported by BSI and SWISS POST (main sponsors) - and some co-sponsors - CTI, USI, SUPSI and PostBus Switzerland.