South African entrepreneurs dive in the Swiss innovation ecosystem
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Ten South African founders have arrived in Switzerland for a five-day business development program across the country, strengthening the links between South Africa and Switzerland. The entrepreneurs will expose their projects to a new market while discovering the Swiss innovation landscape.
Early last month, a team of 10 Swiss startups travelled to Cape Town for an immersion experience in the South African market. As part of the Swiss-South Africa Venture Leaders, the team explored the Silicon Cape startup scene, meeting local experts, providers and startup incubators and attending business development workshops. In parallel with their visit, South African entrepreneurs participated in a series of training workshops with Venturelab and partners from the Swiss South Africa Joint Research program. Ten unique projects emerged from the program and won their places on the Swiss trip.The selection consists of startups active in the fields of ICT, big data, IoT, virtual reality, medtech, agritech, cleantech and material sciences (Find the detailed description of the startups here). Today, the South African team kicks off its journey at one of the country’s two main technical universities, the EPFL, with pitching sessions and IP workshops led by experts. Later in the week, they will move on to Zurich to learn more about what the Swiss innovation ecosystem has to offer budding entrepreneurs.
Their Swiss counterparts from the program will participate in common workshops and will join them at the highlight event of the week: the International Pitch Battle on July 5th. Sign up to meet some of the most promising Swiss and South African startups and vote for the best pitch.
The program is part of the Swiss South Africa Joint Research Project, directed by the Leading House for South Africa, the University of Basel, in collaboration with the South African Technology & Innovation Agency (TIA), organised by Venturelab.
