Swiss startups accept award prizes

Pelt8 is one of the five winners of the fourth edition of the Catapult: Kickstarter program, selected ten impressive Fintech ventures from over 140 applications. Developed by the LHoFT Foundation and supported by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy, the program offers grants up to €50,000 from the Ministry of Economy. Pelt8 is a B2B SaaS and suite of APIs powering the sustainability ecosystem by turning complex disclosures into clean data. The startup aims to make it easy for small to large companies to deal with their growing disclosure requirements through its automated reporting while providing them with the processes and controls to do it in a clean and auditable way. Selected data points can then be shared with various stakeholders from system to system through machine-readable formats.

EcoRobotix wins gold medal
A few weeks after winning the first prize at the SIMA Innovation Awards, EcoRobotix received another prize from the SIVAL Innovation competition. The startup weeding robot ARA has won a gold medal in the Machinery and Automation category. Ecorobotix ARA is a tractor-mounted Ultra High Precision (UHP) crop treatment solution that uses high-resolution cameras and AI to instantly detect individual plants (crops and weeds) in real-time. The ARA UHP sprayer provides unparalleled precision by targeting areas of 6 x 6 cm to treat each plant one by one, far outpacing conventional solutions that spray the entire field and outperforming the latest “smart” sprayers that only target areas of 150 x 150 cm. With its plant-by-plant approach, ARA reduces the use of chemicals by 80-95% and raises crop yields by 5%, thus increasing overall crop profitability. ARA can be used even in windy conditions, day and night, with different crops.

CARU Air CO2 traffic light wins German Design Award
German Design Award category prize for ‘Excellent Product Design Startup’ went to CARU Air, a CO2 traffic light and measuring device that signals when it is time to ventilate. Used particularly in public spaces and classrooms, it helps many people to ventilate correctly, efficiently and sustainably while helping them to reduce the risk of infection with viruses, boost concentration and save costs. The small, compact device fits anywhere and can also be operated intuitively. The fact that CARU air is unique in its simplicity and consistency has also been recognized by Stiftung Warentest, which named the CO2 traffic light a test winner in early 2022.