TOP 100 - Meet the 5 Best Medtech Startups From of 2019 Ranking
scroll south
The TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award ranking features young companies from a range of different sectors. Meet the 5 Swiss startups which took the top spots in the medtech sector in this year's ranking.
Each year 100 investors and experts choose their ten favourite young companies with the most promising business idea. The result is the TOP 100 Swiss Startup ranking. These experts rely on their instinct to propose startups with the best success potential. Year after year, the ranking provides an instant picture of the most innovative and promising young companies in Switzerland. This 5 Swiss startups took the top spots in the medtech sector in this year's ranking.
1. Lunaphore, Lausanne, rank 2
SECOND STAGE TAKES OFF
Lausanne medtech company Lunaphore has overcome the hurdle from product development to market entry.
Lausanne medtech company Lunaphore has overcome the hurdle from product development to market entry.
For their third round of financing, the Lunaphore founders set a target of a capital injection of CHF 25 million in 2019. However, to some investors, including global funds, that is a little conservative. Some are of the opinion that even twice that amount of new funds would be feasible.Obviously, the lenders are convinced of the potential of the EPFL spin-off. It aims to give personalised medicine a helping hand and is committed to the automation of tissue examination. The company, founded by Ata Tuna Ciftlik, Diego Gabriel Dupouy and Déborah Heintze in 2014, makes the detection of cancer cell types more efficient and precise. Their devices rely on a completely new technology developed thanks to the findings of microfluidics. Tissue examination, which used to take several hours, now takes 10 to 30 minutes; so, for example, surgeons can receive information about the type of cancerous tumour and its spread throughout the body during surgery.
GOODBYE TO GARAGE GROOVE
The first Lunaphore product, LabSat, has been on the market since January 2019 – and since then all hell has broken loose in the company’s office and laboratory space at EPFL Innovation Park. “The complexity of our work has completely changed,” says Ciftlik. “Until now, we had been more concerned with a research and development project.” But now the operating business is growing significantly. For the company with its 30 employees, it is important to keep several balls in the air at the same time – from the supply chain to distribution and contact with customers. The days when all three founders took part in external meetings are over, as the number of meetings has exploded: “In order to diversify the knowledge, we have had to create new company functions within a short time that did not exist before.” Production of the Lunaphore instruments is outsourced to specialist companies in Switzerland. About 15 devices should be sold in 2019; however, the start-up is not dependent on the number of instruments delivered, but on who buys them. With the first buyers, according to Ciftlik, it’s a question of “key opinion leaders”. With the market entry, interest is growing – not only among potential customers, primarily research institutions and university hospitals – but also among potential business partners. These are central, because as an unknown start-up, Lunaphore needs one thing above all when dealing with the market in the medical world: confidence. Therefore, it is reliant on well-established partners, including large companies with thousands of employees and billions in sales.
INTENSIVE NEGOTIATIONS
Is not a start-up company inevitably crushed by this unequal relationship? “If you’re really important to a strategic partner, it will go well,” says Ciftlik diplomatically, “even though interests are not necessarily the same.” Intensive negotiations are not just about financial aspects and terms of business, but also the pace: “There’s a substantial difference in timing between big and small companies.”Lunaphore is already working on a new generation of products to be launched in 2021, which are intended to offer customers a range of additional benefits and expanded analysis options, thus significantly improving the value creation process. As an illustration, Ciftlik draws a comparison with the purchase of a computer. With its new analysis devices, Lunaphore will offer not only the hardware, but the complete solution, including software and peripherals.And what happens next to the high-flyers from Lausanne? “This is just the beginning,” says CEO Ciftlik. “Since our first instrument came on to the market, we have benefited from customer feedback and our learning curve is becoming steeper.”
2. AVA, Zürich, rank 3
THE DIGITAL PILL
News from the winner of the last two years: Ava enters a second business area.
A double-double was achieved in the last financial year, says Ava CEO Pascal Koenig. The basketball term refers to a two-digit yield in two key values. At Ava, this means that revenue more than doubled in 2018, reaching over CHF 10 million for the first time.Koenig and his three co-founders have proved that they can also grow, with the geographical expansion in full swing. From the recently opened Hong Kong location, the intention is to gain a foothold in the Chinese market from 2020.Ava earns its money through a data tracker on a woman’s wrist that records nine vital signs of fertility. “We want to stay with the bracelet for the time being,” says Koenig, “but we can greatly extend the functionality.” Just as it tracks signs of ovulation for those wanting to become pregnant, it can thus also act as a means of contraception. The contraceptive market is estimated at USD 23 billion worldwide, but it is barely digitised. One reason for this is the regulatory barrier to entry. “That’s why,” says Koenig, “we are now turning increasingly from a lifestyle-oriented start-up to a medtech company.” The new application of the data bracelet will also be distributed via medical channels, and for that reason Ava’s scientific staff are currently travelling from one gynaecological conference to another. The market entry is planned for 2020.However, Koenig will not experience that as CEO, since he will make way for his co-founder Lea von Bidder on 1 January 2020. As a full-time board member, he will henceforth take care of the long-term strategy and the necessary funds. And always with the bigger goal in mind – that Ava becomes the global pacemaker of data-driven women’s medicine.
3. Piavita, Zürich, rank 8
HIGH-TECH FOR HORSES
At full gallop – medtech start-up Piavita expands worldwide
In 2017, Piavita founder Dorina Thiess travelled with the Swiss National Startup Team to San Francisco where she met her investors. A year later during the Market Entry Camp organised by Innosuisse in San Francisco, she met representatives of some animal hospitals. “The response was overwhelming,” recalls Thiess. The veterinary hospital at the University of California, Davis ordered 18 sensor systems.The appeal of the sensor package from Piavita for veterinarians is that it is strapped to the horse’s stomach, records vital data and sends it automatically to the cloud. This type of remote monitoring brings great benefits, particularly in the rehabilitation phase of sick and injured animals. Horses are flight animals and “they do not show it when something is wrong”, explains Thiess.Together with her partner, engineer Sascha Bührle, Thiess wants to take advantage of this window of opportunity. In April, she founded a US subsidiary and an expansion to Asia is being evaluated. The springboard was participation in a roadshow by Venture Leaders, which led to Hongkong and China in June. “The Asian middle classes have discovered equestrian sports,” says Thiess. And the market is tripling every year. The HSG graduate knows the numbers backwards – now it is about execution: “Our product works. Now we have to exploit the market potential.”
4. Aktiia, Neuchâtel, rank 30
Apply cuff, inflate, read off values: the basic principle of blood pressure measurement has remained the same for more than 100 years. Start-up aktiia could change this: it measures blood pressure with the help of a wristband that works with commercially available optical sensors similar to other wearables. Extensive testing with the aim of clinical validation has been very promising so far.
5. Artidis, Basel, rank 36
Faster diagnosis and more precise breast cancer treatment: that’s the goal of Artidis. The start-up relies on a nanotechnological instrument that scans tissue samples and not only recognises a tumour, but also assesses its aggressiveness, thus reducing the risk of over or under-treatment.It usually takes several days, sometimes even weeks, until the first results of a cancer examination are available and the uncertainty can be very stressful for patients. However, start-up Artidis, based in the Technologiepark Basel, intends to change this. Physicist and CEO Marija Plodinec (below) and her co-founders Philipp Oertle, Tobias Appenzeller and Marko Loparic have succeeded in building an analysis device based on atomic force microscopy that largely automates tumour analysis and can determine whether the cancer is benign or malignant in less than three hours. The analysis also sheds light on the potential of the cancer to form metastases. “This will then enable personalised cancer treatment for the individual patient,” explains Plodinec. The 15-head spin-off of the University of Basel’s Biozentrum is now starting production of the first 10 analysis devices to bring to the market next year. Artidis is currently funded by investment funds, private investors and family offices.
Go Global: We are inviting all Swiss medtech startups to apply for the Venture Leaders Program 2020! Are you a founder? Join us on our roadshow to Silicon Valley or Boston, to make your startup ready for international partnerships, investments & scale-up!
Apply cuff, inflate, read off values: the basic principle of blood pressure measurement has remained the same for more than 100 years. Start-up aktiia could change this: it measures blood pressure with the help of a wristband that works with commercially available optical sensors similar to other wearables. Extensive testing with the aim of clinical validation has been very promising so far.
5. Artidis, Basel, rank 36
Faster diagnosis and more precise breast cancer treatment: that’s the goal of Artidis. The start-up relies on a nanotechnological instrument that scans tissue samples and not only recognises a tumour, but also assesses its aggressiveness, thus reducing the risk of over or under-treatment.It usually takes several days, sometimes even weeks, until the first results of a cancer examination are available and the uncertainty can be very stressful for patients. However, start-up Artidis, based in the Technologiepark Basel, intends to change this. Physicist and CEO Marija Plodinec (below) and her co-founders Philipp Oertle, Tobias Appenzeller and Marko Loparic have succeeded in building an analysis device based on atomic force microscopy that largely automates tumour analysis and can determine whether the cancer is benign or malignant in less than three hours. The analysis also sheds light on the potential of the cancer to form metastases. “This will then enable personalised cancer treatment for the individual patient,” explains Plodinec. The 15-head spin-off of the University of Basel’s Biozentrum is now starting production of the first 10 analysis devices to bring to the market next year. Artidis is currently funded by investment funds, private investors and family offices.
Go Global: We are inviting all Swiss medtech startups to apply for the Venture Leaders Program 2020! Are you a founder? Join us on our roadshow to Silicon Valley or Boston, to make your startup ready for international partnerships, investments & scale-up!
aktiia SA (Hilo): Reinventing Blood Pressure Monitoring
Aktiia was founded in Switzerland in May 2018 out of a passion to create the best tool for diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. Aktiia’s founders, Mattia Bertschi (CEO) and Josep Solà (CTO), previ... Read more
ARTIDIS AG: Nanotechnology tool for cancer diagnosis and treatment
ARTIDIS AG is a clinical stage health-tech company founded in Basel, Switzerland, that has developed the first nanomechanical biomarker for cancer diagnosis and treatment optimization. ARTIDIS nanotec... Read more
Lunaphore Technologies SA: Tumor analysis platform
Lunaphore is disrupting tissue diagnostics field by fundamentally changing the time and resource driven nature of diagnostic assays on tumor sections. Just like the fast sequencing technologies have m... Read more
Piavita AG: Daily assistant for equine veterinarians
Piavita AG is a Zurich-based medtech start-up aiming at transforming the veterinary industry. The Piavet System provides veterinarians an easy, comprehensive and high-precision vital sign monitoring ... Read more
Related articles
Aktiia Raises CHF 6 million to Bring its Cuffless Optical Blood Pressure Monitor to Market
read more
TOP 100 - Meet the 5 Fast Climbers Startups of 2019 Ranking
read more
TOP 100 - Meet the 5 Best Newcomers Startups of 2019 Ranking
read more