The top minds in Swiss innovation
The “Top 100 Swiss Startup Award” rewards Switzerland’s one hundred most promising start-ups. Nearly one hundred experts (companies, foundations, business incubators and higher education institutions) met in Schlieren, in the canton of Zurich, on 14 September to unveil the list for 2016. An overview of the three award-winners.
Over 500 entrepreneurs and investors attended the “Top 100 Swiss Startup Award” ceremony. Seven of the top ten in the rankings are from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, which underscores the Lake Geneva region’s strength in research and innovation.
The projects reflect the growth in digital technologies, biotechnology and medical techniques that have come to the fore, and the many start-ups operating in sectors such as fintech, medtech, big data, cleantech, and the internet of things. What are the stories behind these promising start-ups? This is a profile of the top three: L.E.S.S., Bcomp and Knip.
L.E.S.S is more
L.E.S.S, which stands for Light Efficient Systems, has become a textbook case of an ambitious start-up from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The start-up, which was founded by Yann Tissot and Simon Rivier in 2012, specialises in new, energy-efficient lighting. The company’s fibre optic technology, which produces a new type of lighting, could be a viable alternative to LEDs. The new technology uses ultra-thin fibre and produces a much brighter, more uniform light than LEDs, which is of particular interest to the watchmaking, automotive and IT sectors.
The start-up’s head office is still located at EPFL’s Innovation Park. Since its inception, the founders have won various awards such as the W.A. de Vigier Foundation prize for entrepreneurship, HEC Lausanne’s Strategis Award and second place in the competition for best Swiss start-up in 2014. In April 2015, L.E.S.S. raised CHF 3 million from investors. They currently have nine employees and according to estimates, the business will be posting a turnover of several million Swiss francs in 2016. While production at L.E.S.S. is anticipated to be close to 100,000 units in 2017, in a market valued at CHF 12 billion, this figure is expected to increase tenfold the following year.
Bcomp marks the advent of biocomponents
In second place at the “Top 100 Swiss Startup Award 2016” was another start-up from the French-speaking part of Switzerland: Bcomp was set up in the blueFACTORY technology quarter of Fribourg in 2011. This company, founded by Cyrille Boinay, Christian Fischer, Julien Rion and Andreas Brülhart, has developed materials produced using natural fibres. Its innovative natural composites have already drawn in businesses working in the watchmaking and sports sectors and the company has now set its sights on the car industry.
Bcomp uses a fabric made from flax that is grown exclusively in the Emmental region. The fabric is woven on-site using a traditional process and then glued with balsa wood according to a patented technique that improves the performance of the structure in terms of weight, rigidity and shock absorption.
Since it was established, the Fribourg start-up’s name has been associated with the sport and leisure industries, in particular board sports, with its solutions being applied to skis, snowboards, surfboards and skateboards. Their versatile composites have also been used in a Hublot watch collection.
Knip, the mobile insurance manager
Knip took third place at the awards. This Zurich start-up was launched by Dennis Just and Christina Kehl in 2013 and operates in the financial technology sector (fintech). The company developed a mobile application that compares insurance products. In October 2015, they announced that they had raised CHF 15 million – a record in Switzerland for a fintech start-up. The application bundles all insurance policies together in a simple solution that allows the user to identify any potential for optimisation or savings.
Knip launched its application in Switzerland and Germany and has opened offices in Berlin and Belgrade. The application has already clocked up over 600,000 downloads. With the digitalisation of the insurance market, several Swiss and foreign fintech investors have already backed the Zurich start-up. These investments will allow the business to develop its aggregation solution and work on developing new services.
