Fast route abroad

Dear reader

It has long been a standard criticism of Swiss start-ups that expansion is too slow. Those times are definitely over. Today, companies can demonstrate sales and customers outside Switzerland just a few months after their foundation. For example, deskbird’s desk-sharing app for hybrid work with home and company offices has recorded sales growth of 120% per month, and counts large companies such as the Knauf Group from Germany among its customers.

It’s also faster with livom, which has developed a modular sofa. After only 11 months, the start-up has a presence in Germany, Austria and France, and has sold more than 3,000 sofas. Baby food producer yamo, which is active in the B2C sector, has also reported success. In 2021, its sales multiplied and now German drugstore chain dm will stock yamo’s oat drinks and bars for children in its 1,300 branches.

Cortexia has secured support for its expansion into Germany. The Remondis Group has taken a stake in the Fribourg cleantech start-up and will help to open up the market. iNovitas has also attracted well-known strategic investors: the start-up, which creates digital imagery of road and rail corridors, brought the Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group and the Geoterra Gruppe on board.

Founded in 2019, Swisspod has a strong foothold in the US and has now been able to attract a US investor for its seed round; another investor comes from the United Arab Emirates. The 14 start-ups in the next F10 incubation programme are also at the beginning of their development; they come from six countries and include nine Swiss companies.

Good news came not only from start-ups at the beginning, but also at the end of the lifecycle. Axon Ivy was sold to Ricoh this week, GotCourts has gone to Playtomic and BlueBotics to the Italian electronics group Zapi. The new Swiss Venture Capital Report shows that the number of acquisitions by young tech companies increased sharply in 2021, and this trend appears to be continuing. In contrast, Farmy has not been taken over, but has acquired a start-up itself: Blumenpost recently became part of the online market.

Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora 

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch