- Oct 28, 2022

Kickstart Weekly Digest #6

Weekly Digests are shared during the 10-week Kickstart program to keep our community up to date on exciting news, announcements, and updates from Kickstart, our partners, and our startups and alumni. View in browser here.

Happy Friday, Kickstart Family!

Last Saturday, #Kickstarter22 New Roots hosted the team on a VIP tour as part of an open house day at their headquarters in Oberdiessbach. Read more about the delicious & insightful experience on our blog here.

Kickstart Global Partner AXA hosted a virtual Kickstart Pitch Day on Monday for their international offices to learn more about our successful and innovative partnership. The event included a panel discussion on Best-Practice Innovation with Søren Nielsen, entrepreneur and author of “Death by Innovation Theater”, Tatjana Bender, Head of Corporate Development & Innovation at AXA, Katka Letzing, CEO & Co-Founder at Kickstart & Claudia Bienentreu, Head of Open Innovation at AXA Switzerland. This was followed by 6 pitches from our 2022 scaleups CyberSmart, Surfly, Keleya, Unique, Share.P & medicalmotion.

Tuesday marked our second exclusive CEO Dinner of 2022, where we welcomed over 80 local and international executives to Beaulieu Circulaire Lausanne - the new venue dedicated to circularity and inclusion in Switzerland. Huge thanks to all of our speakers, including Raphaël Conz, Head of Business Unit at Canton de Vaud, Christoph Hunziker from La Mobilière, Nathalie Cadot from MAVA Foundation, Julia Binder from IMD, Alice Fauconnet from #Kickstarter22 New Roots and our 10 pitchers Virtuosis, Workwolf, Aidonic, Doconomy, Ampliphi, SolarGaps, Urbanistic, Happy Bob, Deep Longevity & Gridsteer.

To wrap up the week, Kickstart hosted the City of Zurich Demo Day at the Smart City Lab, where 4 of our 2022 scaleups - Surfly, Nudgd, SolarGaps & Share.P - pitched to various City of Zurich departments, showcasing their innovative solutions and how they could be implemented within the organization.

Thank you for being part of this adventure!

Vertical Vision 👀

Finance & Insurance

Aidonic finalized another successful pilot project with Pan American Development Foundation testing their award-winning digital platform in Trinidad, proving that humanitarian aid distributions can be traceable, transparent, and monitored remotely and in real-time.
bsurance partnered with leading Slovakian financial institution Tatra Banka on a PoC to create and test a new embedded insurance product: transaction-based short-term travel insurance.
Doconomy was selected by the United Nations to present leading perspectives on Climate Action at COP27.
Katka Letzing, CEO & Co-Founder of Kickstart was a guest speaker on the London FinTech Podcast. Listen here.

Smart Cities

Together with global partners from the Circular Digital Health (DiCE project), GRIN has secured ~€10 million from the EU's Horizon Europe program to tackle digital health waste. The goal is to further develop and deliver smart, universal collection systems for medical products in three large-scale pilots in Belgium, Spain, and Slovenia.
LEDCity has expanded to Spain, and has already powered one of their first parking lots in Valencia - illuminated with LEDCity’s energy-efficient lighting system.
Naked Energy has partnered with Rinnai UK, a branch of the leading Japanese heating water control and thermal technology manufacturer.

New Work & Learning

SkyHive launched the Global Alliance for Skills to aid economic renaissance and labor market transitions.
#Kickstarter21 Braindate has announced its partnership with Unwrapit. The feature will help users strengthen the connection they formed during their conversations by sending a token of appreciation to their fellow braindaters.

Health & Wellbeing

Deep Longevity is launching its new solution, JuvAge - a SaaS portal that hosts their patented aging clocks. The clocks can predict Biological Age by analyzing various data types such as clinical blood reports, psychological surveys, microbiomic reports, and more.
Public Health Office Grisons now feature Pro Aidants Benefits Calculator for Family Carers on their website, to show the services that caring and caring relatives can claim, providing them with a personalized list of possible financing entitlements.
TOM Medications peer-reviewed study on the “Prevalence of Drug-Drug Interactions and Duplicate Therapy in Chronic Patients in Switzerland” is now published.

Food & Retail

#Kickstarter21 Aqua Cultured Foods announced their partnership with SV Group to bring alternative seafood sushi cuts to their smart fridges across Switzerland.
PlasticFri are finalists for the Green Award by The Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in New York.
Check out Ampliphi’s New Venture Video, live now.