AIT India 2021: 20 Swiss and Indian entrepreneurs advance their research with international support 

13.12.2021 13:05, Marie Roux

The Swiss-Indian Academia-Industry Training Camp aims to help scientists from Switzerland and India turn their advanced research into market-ready products and services. This year’s training camp closed with a pitch competition this week. The 20 early-stage startups further developed relations between India and Switzerland and gained valuable expertise to grow their companies.

During this year’s Swiss-Indian Academia-Industry Training Camp, which was held online, 10 startups from India and 10 from Switzerland exchange knowledge and gain new skills during a week of training and networking in each country. The twenty entrepreneurs—coming from various research fields—completed two intense weeks of online business development workshops and networking in the Indian and Swiss ecosystems. The training ended with a pitching competition sharing CHF 20,000 of development grants, supported by the Swiss government. The two winners Plastogaz and Oxyle persuaded the juries and received an extra boost to continue scaling their innovations.

“Despite the situation requiring continuing the AIT camp to be held online, learnings and building relationships with India during the two weeks have been very good,” commented Jordi Montserrat, co-founder and managing partner of Venturelab. “The grants for Plastogaz and Oxyle will furthermore provide a very concrete push to support the implementation of these learnings in the cleantech area, which is strong in Switzerland and India.”
 


For the entrepreneurs and researchers, the two weeks laid a valuable foundation to advance their innovation and expand their businesses:  
 
Theodore Caby, co-founder and CEO of Qaptis: “AIT India is a safe environment where you can exchange about your business idea and your personal experience. It allows us to connect with the Indian industry and understand the market.”

Mai Sirry Elbassiouny, creative lead of Smart Squirrel: “The AIT India training helped me better understand how a Swiss startup could approach expanding to Asian markets, particularly how to adapt to the differences in cultural and market expectations. I also really enjoyed making connections with Indian startup founders and experts whose passion for helping people with innovative solutions was inspiring.”

Alexandre Porcello, CEO of KYLYS: “When entering a new market, it’s better to start discussing and collaborating with the right people from the very beginning. I met these people during the 2021 digital version of AIT India.”

Felix Bobbink, co-founder and CEO of Plastogaz: “This is a high-quality program with lots of good content. I found the lecture on cultural sensitivity particularly relevant!”

Learn more about the 10 Indian startups and entrepreneurs who participated in AIT India 2021: 
Unar AI – Balamurugan Varadarajan
Mend Earth – Anmol Bansal
Rapiddx Technologies – Anil Chandra
Space Cold Technology – Kowsalya Natesan
Hand Rehabilitation Device – Swapnil Bukchete
Scavengex – Harini Kandasamy
Triz AI Privacy – Praveen Raj
Cerelia Nutritech – Ruchi Singh
The Happy Llamas – Ankit Bellani
Hecoll – Deepti Nathala
 

Discover the 10 Swiss startups that participated in AIT India 2021
ProjectContraRNA’s ContraRNA is a cutting-edge, non-hormonal, non-invasive contraceptive technology for men. The startup is committed to revolutionizing family planning and population management with no side effects of a hormonal contraceptive and higher efficacy than the traditional barrier methods.

Qaptis builds a kit to retrofit heavy vehicles—such as trucks and ships—and stationary engines to capture CO2 ( potentially NOXs and SOXs) without any energy penalty. The kit can capture up to 90% of the CO2 and store it in a liquid form. The CO2 can then be reused in different applications such as materials, plastics, and synthetic fuels.

Syncmind streamlines the process of interpreting neural signals by making custom integrated circuits (IC). The startup aims to aid brain-computer interfaces (BCI) in advancing healthcare.

FluoSphera develops multi-tissue systems that better predict the effects of compounds (drugs, chemicals, cosmetics, etc.) on human health. Thanks to FluoSphera’s disruptive technology, companies better protect consumers from toxic compounds, develop more efficient and safer therapies, and reduce animal experimentation.

KYLYS aims to provide patients with highly effective and safe products based on the next generation of hyaluronic acid (HA) for aesthetic and medical applications (e.g., dermal fillers, reconstructive surgery, long-lasting viscosupplementation, and vectors for cell or drug therapies).

Smart Squirrel is a game app that will help players get a fun and easy financial education. The game has different levels of difficulty, each with tasks that will teach a financial concept or reveal cognitive biases players may have. By the end of the game, players will feel more confident to take on the real market.

Oxyle’s novel catalyst-driven technology efficiently eliminates over 95% of highly persistent, mobile, and toxic pollutants from effluents of municipalities and industries cost-effectively and sustainably. Oxyle’s technology allows customers to meet their strict discharge limits and even reuse treated water.

Plastogaz develops the next-generation technologies to advance circularity: The startup’s technologies transform hard-to-recycle plastics into value-added products.

NIMBLE improves the diagnosis of skin diseases by mechanical characterization. The startup introduces a novel ultra-light suction device for objective measurements performed in-vivo and offers a pain-free and reliable characterization of skin mechanical properties.

e-Fishency offers two founding pillars of genetic rescue—genomic sequencing and biobanking—to increase aquaculture yields sustainably and improve the efficiency of conservation efforts. The startup’s vision is to use science to move along with nature, not against it. 


About the Swiss-Indian Academia-Industry Training Camp
To support promising entrepreneurs from Switzerland and India, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) has mandated the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences to execute the AIT program. Venturelab and Swissnex India are key program partners. This year, the program was adapted with an online version of two weeks.