Sportradar and Nanolive founders win ‘EY Entrepreneur of Year’ Award

This year, 43 companies applied for the 25th edition of the EY Entrepreneur of The Year Award – and 14 made it to the final round. A ten-member jury evaluated the finalists independently of EY to select the most outstanding personalities. During the award ceremony with over 400 guests, a winner for each of the four categories Service & Retail, Family Business, Industry, High-Tech & Life Sciences and Emerging Entrepreneurs has been revealed. Three winners come from the canton of St. Gallen and one from Canton Vaud.

Two young tech companies also took home an award trophy for the categories Service & Retail and Emerging Entrepreneurs.

Carsten Koerl, Sportradar AG, St. Gallen (SG), Service & Retail
As an engineer at the University of Konstanz, Carsten Koerl was passionate about using data to make successful predictions, resulting in two startups. Matured by experience, he founded Sportradar AG in 2001 with a partner because he noticed that everyone in sports wanted accurate data that no one could provide. Since then, he has been collecting real-time sports data for sports clubs, media houses, bookmakers, and sports organizations. The company employs 3,000 people in over 20 countries, with a 2021 IPO on Nasdaq. “With Carsten Koerl, a passionate person wins in the category “Service & Trade”, who has created a business empire out of a niche, which for a long time has received far too little attention”, says Sascha Stahl, EY Program Partner.

Yann Cotte, Nanolive SA, Tolochenaz (VD), Emerging Entrepreneurs
Together with Sebastien Equis, Yann Cotte founded Nanolive in 2013 at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne with the idea of revolutionizing the cell research industry. Today, Nanolive offers a globally unique technology to observe living cells in 3D without destructive dyes, which is of unheard-of value for research. The technology, 95% of which is exported worldwide, is modularly scalable for hardware and software, which promises great future potential. The jury recognizes Yann Cotte as a visionary in the high-tech medical field, but one who understands how to implement a promising business model. "Yann Cotte is a true revolutionary in his field, and his success illustrates the positive development of the Lake Geneva region is developing around EPFL," says Frédéric Tissot, Director Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise Suisse Romandie of EY.

Andreas Wälti from Evatec AG and Franziska Tschudi Sauber und Daniel Tschudi from Weidmann Holding AG won the categories Industrie, High-Tech & Life Sciences and Family Business, respectively.

(Press release/RAN)
Photo: Yann Cotte (Middle) and Carsten Koerl (second right)