CHF 750‘000 awarded at the 30th De Vigier 2019 Award ceremony

This year's de Vigier Startup competition involved several changes: First, following the preliminary selection, the foundation board nominated the Top 60 young entrepreneurs which presented at the first ever Selection Day of the foundation. The list was reduced to 17 and finally to ten startups finalists from which five winners were selected and each presented with a cheque of CHF 100'000. Secondly, unlike previous award ceremonies, this year five finalists also took home a cash prize of CHF 50'000 each.  The additional prizes were bestowed in celebration of the 30th anniversary.

The 2019 de Vigier winners include:

Scewo (ZH)  - developed a wheelchair that climbs stairs. The company won also the audience award at the ceremony.

PXL Vision (ZH) – is developing an innovative digital identity verification to curb Identity fraud while protecting personal data.

Swiss Motion Technologies (VD) – offers tailored liners for better fitting prosthesis

T3 Pharmaceuticals (BS) – is specialising in targeted cancer therapy using bacteria

Vatorex (ZH) – the startup uses heat to save the bees from the Varroa mite is a parasite that damages bee colonies in Europe and North America.

The five finalists which received CHF50.000 are:

Mirrakoi (VD) – developed an intuitive and accessible 3D cad tool that enables designers and architects and engineers to create complex surfaces much faster and more intuitively.

Mobbot (FR) – aims to help construction companies to save time and money with 3d concrete printing

PharmaBiome (ZH) – is rethinking intestinal therapy with its proprietary technology developed to isolate, culture and characterise gut microbes.

Piomic Medical (ZH) – developed a wearable wound healing device for the treatment of hard-to-heal wounds.

Sleepiz (ZH) – with its touchless medical sleep monitoring device, aims to help patients with sleep disorders to be diagnosed from their homes.

To this day, the foundation de Vigier has distributed over CHF 11 million of seed money. The results are over 90 startups, successful IPOs, multiple company-exists and above all, many newly created jobs.

(Press release - SK)