14 Swiss startups selected for the Kickstart acceleration program 2019

The fourth edition of the Kickstart acceleration program has set a new record this year. For the first time, 48 national and international tech growth startups and scale-ups from 17 countries were selected, in addition to nine corporate innovation teams (intrapreneurship teams). The selected startups provide cutting-edge solutions for a wide range of challenges across six verticals. From September to November 2019, the teams will work in Switzerland, where they seek innovation partnerships with corporations and organizations.

Of the 48 startups, 14 are from Switzerland. These include;

Food and Retail Tech

Planted Foods - creates tasty "meat" directly from plants – and skips the animal. The plant-based meat is clean-label, sustainable, healthy and cruelty-free.

PREMIUM energy -  developed by SwissTOP: Their heritage is selected organic Alpine hemp which serves as the basis for a) energy-releasing high-protein shakes, b) liquid food for care & hospitals, c) meal replacement shakes, d) pioneering in the first plant-based meat products made with hemp.

SwissDeCode -  is transforming food safety by helping Farmers and Food Manufacturers to grow and produce food that is safe to eat.

Fintech & Digital Assets

Annanow - is an innovative last-mile delivery service that connects products with people in insurance and beyond

Assetyze - supports you with unlocking the full potential of dormant, tangible assets such as art, classic cars or other precious collectables.

atpar - Banking-grade finance for blockchain. Atpar enables a global and frictionless financial market infrastructure.

Contract Vault - has developed an AI and blockchain-powered end-to-end document, contract and workflow creation, management and automation platform that enables new categories of agreements and makes every step of the document lifecycle massively more efficient.

Taxdone - helps people do their taxes in 5 minutes, with smart questions and the right deductions – starting with Zurich.

EdTech

Taskbase - offers AI-based, easy-to-integrate modules that enable existing learning solutions to adapt learning paths to each student’s specific needs through our ability to automatically score complex exercises and give personalized didactic feedback.

Healthtech

Nahtlos - offers a comfortable and easy to use Smart Textile electrocardiogram (ECG) solution for long-term monitoring of the heart's activity.

OneDoc - is a Swiss platform to find a doctor, dentist or therapist and book medical appointments online.

Smart City & Technology

AirBie - is promoting bike-sharing as a means of transportation. They have developed a smart bike lock (with GPS), which fits any bike, such that anyone can create a bike-sharing fleet in a few minutes and manage it with their smart city analytics software.

Oxygen at Work - improves the air quality in office spaces combining natural plants with modern technology in order to improve the health of the employees and reduce the energy consumption of buildings.

Totemi - is a complete solution to create unique urban customer experiences. Thanks to its robust, autonomous (up to 7 years) and identifiably connected signage, TOTEMI brings a new form of discovery and commitment for the users of a city.

The Selected Intrapreneurship teams include:

advaisor AG (ETH Zürich spin-off) - developed a software to measure and improve corporate culture (e.g. collaboration, client centricity, trust, etc.) using big data and artificial intelligence instead of cumbersome surveys.

Dermatologist (Swisscom) - offers a skin cancer classifier based on artificial intelligence to support dermatologists in diagnose of melanoma.

tooyoo (Mobiliar / Swisscom) -  wants to power a legally valid, digital signature for testament and every end-of-life document in Switzerland in the future and is investigating the first steps towards this goal. 

UPTO (AXA) - offers a flexible car subscription model as an alternative to car purchase and leasing. The team had already successfully participated in Kickstart 2017 and is now coming back in order to scale their business model further.

eMost (Axpo) - is working on development, production and marketing of smart plug & play battery storage systems, which are used for flexible and environmentally friendly power supply on construction sites, events, in emergencies, for charging e-cars or as a replacement for diesel generators.

Fillip (Mibelle Group /Migros) - is an automated detergent dispenser that automatically supplies detergent for every wash cycle. In order to ensure a real end-to-end experience, Fillip also considers the touchpoints initial purchase of detergent, the replacement of detergent and the reuse of empty packaging.

Klima@ssurance (Mobiliar) - is an innovative insurance solution that encourages people to get involved in climate protection in a simple and convenient way. To achieve this, they are focusing on reuse and repair instead of new replacement and are fighting against the waste of resources.

RiseUp Mentoring Platform (Swisscom) - helps young professionals make critical career decisions, by providing access to the right information, inspiring role models and meaningful development opportunities.

Supply Chain Fit (Migros) - provides supply chain analytics powered by machine learning algorithms to advise consumer product companies on tailoring their supply chains to market needs – to seize growth opportunities while staying efficient in an increasingly complex world.

(RAN)

Photo: Thomas Lüthi, Ringier