ActLight wins CHF 130.000

Which one of the competing innovative startup-projects is the most likely to breakthrough on the market? That was the question to which four promising companies, still in the early-phase of their venture, wanted to answer in Lausanne. ActLight ended up making the final cut, winning an additional 130.000 Swiss francs in seed-capital as a well-deserved prize.

ActLight: the future of solar-technology

Conventional solar-cells, still to this day remain very bulky and perform poorly when used for small electronics solutions is deployed in suboptimal lighting conditions. The startup of co-founder and CEO Serguei Okhonin has developed minuscule solar-modules, which thanks to its integration on semiconductor chips, are able to address these problems by enhancing their respective performances by a factor of one-thousand. Potential applications for this product are numerous, e.g. in the context of monitoring the environment, measure energy consumption or follow personal health status with help of wireless sensors. ActLight was able to gain favour with several investors in the past month and several major industry players have expressed their interest in the potential of the new technology. Founded in October last year, the company was shortly afterwards already able to make the finals of the Swiss Technology Awards. The task at hand now, is to further develop the prototype and to secure additional financing, so as to achieve the planned product-launch in 2014.

The private initiative venture kick is financed by the GEBERT RÜF STIFTUNG, the ERNST GÖHNER foundation, the OPO foundation, the AVINA STIFTUNG and FONDATION 1796. The project is managed by the IFJ Institut für Jungunternehmen in St. Gall. Since its inception in the autumn of 2007, venture kick has awarded 7.5 million francs in prize money. The efforts have resulted in the creation of 151 highly innovative companies, which have created 1.700 sustainable jobs. Furthermore, the supported startups have been able to attract equity, loans, support and prize money to the total tune of over 240 million francs.