Swiss Startup Team to Explore South African Market Opportunities

26.03.2019 18:30, Guillaume Tinsel

For the third year, a team of 10 Swiss startups have the opportunity to discover the South African market, as part of the Swiss Venture Leaders to South Africa. The selection consists of Sciencepreneurs active in material sciences, cleantech, big data, AI, biotech and agritech.

The Swiss Venture Leaders to South Africa aims to boost the entrepreneurial knowhow and exposure of 10 Swiss Sciencepreneurs seeking growth opportunities by offering a unique program bringing entrepreneurs to innovation hotspots of Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa.

The entrepreneurs will fly to Cape Town May 6th to 8th and then to Johannesburg until May 10th for a market discovery program comprising workshops with local business experts from Invest South Africa, industry visits, and sessions with South African startups to support each other on defining local market entry in their respective markets. The Swiss and South African startups will compete in a pitching battle in Cape Town on Monday 6th.

The program takes place in parallel to advanced entrepreneurship training for the South African startups, a workshop culminating with the selection of the 2019 South African startup team that will fly to Switzerland later in the year for an intense business development program and dive into Switzerland's innovation ecosystem. This will be an opportunity for the 'return' pitching battle in Zurich.

The program is supported by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, Switzerland (SERI) and the South African Technology and Innovation Agency (TIA). It is directed by the Leading House for South Africa - the University of Basel, national & international cooperation - and operated by Venturelab.

The 10 selected startups are:

Helene Konstantinides, Alver Golden Chlorella SA, Biotech

Alver Golden Chlorella is addressing the growing demand for tasty, low-impact, and high-protein foods by developing a range of healthy, tasty and sustainable foods with the micro-algae Golden Chlorella®.

Grégoire Gentile, Caulys, Agritech

Caulys has developed a tool that brings agriculture into cities. Thanks to hydroponic vertical growth systems, one can grow many fruits and vegetables at home with 40 percent greater yields, lower energy consumption and 90 percent less water.

Jimmy Loup, Coskin, Biotech

Coskin offers a way of obtaining a skin diagnosis in seconds, thanks to a device that can extract several characteristics inside the skin in a non-invasive way.

Ramzi Bouzerda, Droople, Cleantech

Droople provides businesses, utilities, communities and governing bodies with our water 4.0 platform.

Jonas Pollard, Hemolytics, Medtech

Hemolytics is developing a patented chemical amplification method enabling ultrasensitive detection of malaria using inexpensive reagents.

Utku Gülan, Hi-D Imaging, Medtech

We provide a novel tailored heart valve selection tool which helps the patients by improving their life quality after the valve replacement.

Briac Barthes, HiLyte, Cleantech

HiLyte developed a consumable based iron battery that generates enough power to charge a phone and light a LED. It would be the only solution providing clean, safe, affordable and on-demand energy in rural Africa.

Ludwig Clément, Commochain, Blockchain

Securing and accelerating physical commodity transactions with blockchain technology. Commochain brings blockchain technology to physical commodity trading by streamlining, securing and making compliant the transactions.

Christian Hugo Hoffmann, Syntherion, Fintech

Syntherion develops and sells AI-based risk management software to smaller and medium-sized banks that currently arrive at poor estimates of profits and losses for credit risk management activities.

Andrea Moroni Stampa, xFarm, Agritech

xFarm is a platform created by a farmer with the goal of taking farms into the digital age, by simplifying data collection and analysis, thus reducing paperwork, improving efficiency and sustainability and allowing the traceability of agricultural products.

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CommoChain SA: Streamlining the back-office of commodity trading

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Droople SA: Droople is the Water Intelligence Platform for buildings.

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Hemolytics: PoC to detect malaria

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Hi-D Imaging AG: A novel pre-operational planning tool for cardiologists

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hiLyte Sàrl: Smart&a energy system for off-grid application

hiLyte is developing innovative energy systems for off-grid applications with a special target on Sub-Saharan Africa where 600 millions people lacks electricity access, resulting in a market of 30 bil... Read more

xFarm Technologies SA: xFarm is a digital platform for the Farmers

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10 Swiss startups will explore the South-African market with their innovations, as part of the Venture Leaders South Africa program
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Swiss Startup Team to Explore South African Market Opportunities

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