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 online sector in this year's ranking.
1. BRING! LABS, Zurich, rank 18
The Bring! team started with the simple mission of replacing shopping lists with an app. Now it is working to turn the app into a comprehensive shopping assistant – and not only in Switzerland, but also in Germany, where more than a million people plan their shopping with Bring! Since spring, they have been able to order products from the app and have them delivered to their home.
“It was our vision from the beginning to improve the daily shopping of millions of people,” says CEO Marco Cerqui (below), who together with Sandro Strebel founded the Zurich-based start-up Bring!. And the two are well on their way to realising their vision. Thanks to Bring!, couples, families and flatmates can use their smartphones to share shopping lists that synchronise automatically. The easy-to-use app has already gained millions of users worldwide, many from the German-speaking countries, but also from France, Italy, Spain and overseas countries.
Users can also order the items on their shopping list via the app. For this, the start-up collaborates with Brack.ch in Switzerland and Bringmeister, Edeka’s delivery service, in Germany. Through targeted trade marketing with various partners in the FMCG sector (consumer goods and promotional products), the start-up with offices in Switzerland and Germany is generating excellent sales growth. Currently, the 20-strong team is working on user growth and further geographic expansion.
2. PROTON TECHNOLOGIES, Plan-les-Ouates, rank 27
Proton Technologies started with an encrypted email service; its second product was a service for construction of virtual private networks. Ultimately, the Geneva-based company wants to fully protect user privacy. Support has come from, among others, the EU, which is promoting the development
of a product range for secure collaboration in companies with a grant of about EUR 2 million.
3. CARVOLUTION, Bannwil (BE), rank 31
A flatrate subscription instead of ownership: what has become commonplace in films with Netflix or music with Spotify, Carvolution now does for cars. In addition to great flexibility, subscriptions can be terminated at any time with one month’s notice – and with full cost transparency. Investors such as Redalpine see potential in the idea and have invested since the beginning of 2019 in the Bern start-up.
4. TESTINGTIME, Zurich, rank 35
TestingTime recruits and provides test persons for usability tests, focus groups, interviews and surveys. More than 500 companies from 22 countries from Axa to Zalando rely on the services of the Zurich start-up, which has offices in Germany and the UK.
5. GUURU, Hünenberg, rank 38
With the help of guuru, companies can turn loyal customers into customer advisers – guurus. A proprietary algorithm finds the right guuru for specific questions. The cost for companies is well below traditional customer service and sales support. A financing round of just under CHF 3 million in spring 2019 has allowed acceleration of European expansion.
Go Global: We are inviting all Swiss online startups to
apply for the Venture Leaders Program 2020! Are you a founder? Join us on our roadshow to Silicon Valley, Hong Kong or New York, to make your startup ready for international partnerships, investments & scale-up!