Kickstart announces the 2023 cohort

Kickstart is a zero-equity, open innovation platform that brings together public and private organizations, startups, investors and experts to deliver next-generation products and services and create impact. Kickstart offers an 11-week program through which selected entrepreneurs engange with companies, organizations, cities, foundations, and universities to establish proofs of concept, pilot and commercial projects and other innovation partnerships.

For its 8^th edition, a selection committee of 170 experts evaluated more than 1000 applications from 62 countries to select the most outstanding solutions. Forty-one startups from 13 countries, including Germany, Austria, Singapore, USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Israel, Spain, and Estonia, secured a spot in the program. Thirteen of the selected companies come from Switzerland. In five verticals (New Work & Learning, Finance & Insurance, Food & Retail, Health & Well-being and Smart Cities), the startups presented their business models and ideas for the future.

The selected Swiss startups in their respective categories are:

New Work & Learning

Aixa Digital Humans – offers an AI-based easy to use and extensible software platform, to allow organisations to create and implement their own face-to-face conversational AI experience that looks and sounds like a real person.

atwork – developed an HR Analytics software to support executives and HR leaders make better decisions faster. Its atwork framework is a simple-to-use, coherent approach to employee data collection and analysis.

Finance and Insurance

Calvin Risk – risk management system centred around a company’s AI inventory.

Pelt8 – built a cloud platform to enable companies to collect sustainability-related data and generate automatically curated reports.

Food and Retail

Advection Engineering – developed a technology platform for marbled whole-cut analogues.

Health and Well-being

PIPRA – AI-powered products for preventing, predicting, and diagnosing delirium.

QuantActions – is an ETH spinoff focusing on cognitive assessment offering a mobile health platform to detect subtle mental changes - objectively, continuously and highly scalable.

OptiChroniX – built myAVOS, a smartphone well-being application, to be a digital coach designed to empower individuals to proactively manage their cognitive health and embrace positive lifestyle changes that come with age.

NALU – provides women courses and apps like NALU Cycle Flow and 1:1 coaching services to help them understand their cycles. The programs teach them how to naturally regulate their hormones for balanced and higher energy levels.

Smart Cities

Enerdrape – develops the world’s first thermal panel for underground environments that turns them into renewable heat sources for buildings' heating and cooling needs.

Urbio – offers software to help energy providers plan the energy transition globally.

Viboo – offers self-learning predictive control as a cloud service for smart-thermostat and building automation systems.

Uzufly – offers an all-in-one solution for planning and communicating urban development, construction and virtual reality projects.

Click here to learn more about all selected companies.

(Press release/RAN)