Start-ups on the podium

Dear reader

The news of Skycell’s CHF 32 million series C financing round, supported by investors from the Middle East, Asia and Switzerland, made waves this week. Today, the logistics company, which manufactures IoT smart containers for the safe, secure and sustainable transport of pharmaceutical products, supports the world’s top 20 pharma companies and aims to achieve end-to-end climate neutrality by 2040.

Another double-digit million investment was made in the year-old fintech start-up Flowbank. The Zurich-based start-up, now with offices in the banking district of Paradeplatz, secured USD 11.85 million from CoinShares International, a leading player in digital assets. Licensed by FINMA, the start-up wants to make investing accessible to anyone.

ETH Zurich spin-off Tinamu Labs, Winterthur-based Acodis and Solothurn-based Carify were also in the spotlight with their investment rounds. They develop, respectively, digital solutions to enable drone inspection, data extraction and seamless closure of car subscriptions. In the healthcare sector, Loop Medical sealed a USD 6.4 million Series A round in order to file for US FDA clearance and ramp up manufacturing.

MoonLake Immunotherapeutics is taking an increasingly popular path for Swiss companies to go public. It has merged with a SPAC that is listed on the Nasdaq and plans to raise USD 230 million. This makes it the third Swiss start-up to use this IPO approach this year.

Investment is essential to fuel growth, but start-ups also need other forms of backing to push them ahead; for example, Foodetective has joined forces with Coca‑Cola HBC Switzerland to make restaurant operations manageable. Marketing analytics platform Windsor has gained more than 120 customers in just one year, and US-based DuPont Sustainability Solutions has taken over sustainability pioneer Sofies: the team will remain at its location while serving the new parent company.

Digitalswitzerland’s Start-up Battles, which feature 15 start-ups in five verticals, have started. Every week, a new episode of videos will be released and the favourite from the public online vote will proceed to the next pitching round.

The first annual Swiss Start-up Conference takes place virtually on 19 October and Hack Winterthur on 22-24 October. And remember to register for those awards programmes with pending deadlines.

Have a good weekend.

Ritah Ayebare Nyakato
Duty Editor, Startupticker