Luxury Venture Group kicks off

The Luxury Venture Group is planning a Swiss-based incubator, accelerator, and venture capital ecosystem with the goal to scout, select, accelerate, and invest in startups from Luxury and related industries. Focus areas are art and culture, design, fashion and accessories and media, travel and lifestyle. Startups from the luxury industry, which combine impact and profit along with innovation, creativity, sustainability, and social responsibility will benefit from the ecosystem’s international network, expertise, and capital to transform their ideas into businesses.

“We have to look into tomorrow to understand what matters today for the Luxury industry. Luxury Venture Group, Geneva creates an ecosystem and belongingness for startups from Luxury and related industries based anywhere in the world. Our approach combines impact and profit along with innovation, creativity, sustainability, social responsibility and of course craftsmanship", explains Deependra Pandey, Founder and CEO, Luxury Venture Group Geneva.

To kick off the initiative, the group is organizing the premiere launch of the Luxury Venture Day on 18 October in Zurich to introduce the ecosystem and bring together various players including luxury startups, Investors/VCs, game-changing disruptors in the Luxury industry, and academic institutions. Jointly, the audience will help to examine the needs of luxury and related industries and analyze new market opportunities, sustainable practices, and digital trends for luxury brands. Through a series of panel sessions, keynotes, interviews and masterclasses, the program will look at the true meaning of luxury, that how new luxury startups can help to shape the future of luxury through innovation, digitalization, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

Multiple speakers will address the audience; among them is Alexandre Catsicas, CEO of Artmyn, an EPFL spinoff developing technological tools for digitizing art in order to create 5D images and 1.5billion pixels immersive film.

As part of the program, six startups from Art, Design, Travel, Technology have been selected to participate in the event. Four of them including Armillion from Switzerland will address the audience and contest for the Best Startups Pitch Award. Armillion developed a luxury smart bracelet, which not only enables contactless payment but is also used for multiple purposes such as opening and locking homes and cars.

The other two startups, which also stem Switzerland, have been invited to join the premier event as participants. These are; VOLTITUDE, developing and manufacturing luxury-folding e-bikes designed for urban mobility and the ETH Zurich spin-off, Haelixa provides reliable IN-product traceability solutions based on its DNA particles technology to ensure consumer good supply chain transparency and integrity.

The premiere event will set the foundation for the upcoming events organised by the Luxury Venture Group. Some of the initiatives include the Luxury Innovation Award and Luxury Venture Day.

Registration for the event is still open.