First Ventures boosts five new projects

The First Ventures program offers students from Universities of Applied Sciences funding and necessary support to transform their ideas into a business. Following the recent selection round, the jury confirmed to support five projects. ONEDU and CoatSim have already received the funding. Tuyoh, SurroundPower and BATVISION will receive the remaining budget up to CHF 150’000, upon reaching the specific conditions defined by the Jury.

ONEDU
Founded by Patricia Frei, a filmmaker and midwife and Lynn Huber, an anthropologist and midwife, ONEDU is an online education platform designed to empower people. As the first course, the team offers ‘Midwife Refugee Kit’, an e-Learning tool for midwives working with asylum-seeking families. In a more and more globalised world, in which people move more frequently, hospitals are confronted with an influx of people from all over the world, with all kinds of different backgrounds. Understanding and meeting the needs of every individual has become even more difficult as the medical staff. For instance, midwives are confronted with the diversity of their patients’ needs, social, economic and legal backgrounds, yet such issues are neither addressed in the current curriculum of a midwife, in school nor further training. Through ONEDU, the course Midwife Refugee Kit will offer different topics to address this gap. The topics include transcultural competencies, trauma-sensitive work, inequality and racism and person-centred care. The first part of the tool should be available in autumn 2021.

CoatSim, ZHAW
In the powder coating industry, process design is based on costly trial and error methods that cannot guarantee the optimal settings. Hence there is a potential to reduce material waste, operational costs, and correspondingly the environmental footprint. To realize this potential, CoatSim offers a unique solution based on a thoroughly validated simulation software that can replicate any coating process one-to-one in the form of its digital twin. Furthermore, the solver will be coupled with a state-of-the-art optimization algorithm running on cloud computing facilities with a user-friendly interface. Led by a team of two; Bercan Siyahhan (CEO and CTO), spearheading the technical development, and Malcolm Werchota the Business Development Specialist, Coatsim seeks to impact the powder coating and galvanizing industries significantly. Having already impressed 4 major industry players in Switzerland, the team plans to establish a startup within 18 months.

BATVISION, ZHDK
Social, cultural and environmental problems are exceedingly complex and therefore hard to grasp. To solve these issues, it is necessary to teach people about them, which is difficult, especially due to their social complexity. BATVISION visualises the bat’s aural image and explains the concept of echolocation in an immersive way. Surrounded by complete darkness, the environment only becomes tangible for the VR experience user while screaming. Furthermore, the project raises awareness for an endangered species. The first version of their prototype was developed as a graduation project in the BA Industrial Design in collaboration with the Immersive Arts Space at ZHdK. Target customers include exhibition hosts or event organisers; however, the company also sees potential for embodied experiences in the education and health sectors. BATVISION’s team includes Eliane Zihlmann, Raffaele Grosjean and Oliver Sahli.

Tuyoh, FHNW
With Global welfare on the rise, more than two billion people will soon be able to afford and access basic household appliances, like a fridge or a washing machine. The problem is, if mainly low-quality and unsustainable products are bought, global CO2 emissions will skyrocket. Tuyoh aspires to solve this problem with a technology that links household appliances to developing countries with capital providers. By bundling the services of capital providers, insurances and manufacturers, we move the lifetime benefits of the sustainable product to the point of purchase, making it the most attractive option on the market. Alongside increasing consumer welfare by fighting global social inequality, Tuyoh aims to reduce CO2 emissions by making the most resource-efficient appliances accessible, affordable and desirable. Behind Tuyoh is a team of five entrepreneurs planning to establish a venture in the first half of 2021.

SurroundPower 
The power socket is widespread and is the way people use electricity today. However, this century-old concept is not user-friendly. With SurroundPower, the team promises to deliver a new approach with variability, an attractive design, and a higher safety standard than the existing power socket. SurroundPower consists of a powertrack and various adapters. While the powertrack replaces the skirting board in the living area and distributes the power throughout the room, the adapters provide a secure connection between the powertrack and users’ appliances. It can be plugged-in and moved anywhere on the powertrack. Although target customers include construction companies and general contractors, the team is already being approached by other interested customers. The team, comprising of three industrial engineers with a technical and electrical background, plans to kick off their start-up journey during the course of the year 2021.

(RAN)
Photo: Team SoundPower