Meet the 5 winners from this years Swisscom StartUp Challenge!
After a first selection, public voting, pitch-training and actual pitches, the five winners of the Swisscom StartUp Challenge 2020 are ready for the Exploration Program at Swisscom's 5G Lab. Meet the Startups that might revolutionize next generation of mobile communication!
Applications were received from a total of 125 startups from 30 different countries for this year's Swisscom StartUp Challenge focused entirely on 5G, in partnership with Venturelab, Ericsson and Qualcomm CDMA. The programme, initially launched in 2013 - has seen around 1'300 startups applying to take part and has provided previous Swisscom StartUp Challenge participants as TOP 100 Swiss Startups such as CREAL, Gmelius, Involi and PXL Vision.On 17 December 2020, the top ten start-ups pitched to the panel of experts. The judges included Martin Bürki (Managing Director Ericsson Switzerland), Enrico Salvatori (Senior Vice President & President Qualcomm EMEA), Christoph Aeschlimann (Chief Technology Officer Swisscom), Friederike Hoffmann (Head of Connected Business Solutions Swisscom) and Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler (Chief Digital Officer Swisscom). In order to impress this jury, not only smart ideas were important, but also a convincing business model as well as team spirit and determination.
Friederike Hoffmann from Swisscom says: “I have been greatly impressed by the vision and innovation of these start-up companies! The Exploration Programme gives us the chance to experience at first-hand the opportunities offered by the latest 5G technology. You have to see the applications in action to grasp the true potential of 5G. I am really looking forward to it.”
Meet the 5 winners who will have the chance to carry out testing and development as part of a one-week exploration programme in one of the world's most advanced 5G networks and in Swisscom's 5G Lab:
Fotokite: Fotokite provides Public Safety teams with live on-site and remotely streamed situational awareness solutions to help them stay safe, save lives, and preserve property. Fotokite systems are mounted on top of Public Safety vehicles and operate with the single push of a button, streaming aerial thermal and RGB video to help them size-up emergency response scenes. Fotokite is a 50-person ETH-Zurich spin-off with offices in Zurich, Syracuse, and Boulder.
HEGIAS: HEGIAS VR is world’s first browser-/cloud-based and automated solution for visualization and communication using virtual reality for the construction and real estate sector. It enables architects’ 3D plans to be viewed and altered in a virtual world by one or more people from any location at the touch of a button, at any stage of planning or construction.
qiio: qiio provides plug and play, edge-to-cloud secure cellular IoT solutions optimized for bidirectional connectivity through the cloud. We provide customers with everything theyneed to securely connect, monitor, and control their industrial assets. qiio’s technology is ideal for high-security IoT applications requiring remote management, monitoring and predictive maintenance in hard-to-reach places.
Robotic Systems Lab (ETH): We bring cutting-edge technology in teleoperation and automation for heavy machinery to a product level - and provide a solution to work in places which are too dangerous or too remote for humans to operate. Our unmanned solution enables safe clean-up of the ammunition, tree harvesting in remote forests, removal of rockfalls and mudslides on roads and allows continued work during Pandemies.
ZaiNar (USA): ZaiNar provides real time location for any 5G device to within a meter in 3D. ZaiNar location is powered by patented advancements in signal processing for tracking phones, cars, drones and IoT without hardware changes and without additional battery drain. ZaiNar uses an order or magnitude less spectrum than other positioning techniques and is flexible across frequencies and protocols.
