Kickstart Accelerator welcomes 9 Swiss startups to the 2017 program

Kickstart Accelerator, an initiative of digitalswitzerland operated by Impact Hub Zurich, has today announced the 30 startups for its second cohort that will join its 2017 program, as of September. Among them are nine Swiss startups in the verticles Fintech, Food and Smart cities.

Kickstart Accelerator is a Europe's largest zero equity, multi-corporate accelerators with the aim of putting the Swiss innovation ecosystem on the global map of entrepreneurship.

This year Kickstart Accelerator received over 1,500 applications from all over the world. The top 60 were invited to participate in the final part of the selection process – a two day bootcamp in Zurich. At this stage, they had a chance to pitch their ideas to the jury, comprised of industry professionals, investors and corporate representatives. In the end, only 30 startups from 15 countries, including nine startups from Switzerland, were chosen to take part in an 11-week programme taking place from 4 September to 17 November 2017.

"It’s great to see applications from so many countries, wanting to build, challenge and scale their businesses here in the Swiss innovation ecosystem" , said Patricia Schlenter, Programme Manager at Kickstart Accelerator, “what I am particularly excited about is that 13 out of 30 startups at the Kickstart Accelerator have at least one woman as founder", she adds

The nine Swiss startups are:

Fintech
AAAccell – a spin-off of the University of Zurich developing a software which transforms existing portfolios into trusted solutions for financial services industry.

Apiax – Zuich based startup dedicated to transforming complex regulations into easy-to-use digital compliance rules.

PriceHubble – enables smarter real estate decisions by bringing the latest in Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics and data visualization to market participants along the entire real estate value chain.

Food
FlavorWiki – The startup developed proprietary systems and algorithms that turn normal consumers into accurate taste testers capable of working together with producers to create products perfectly suited to market demands.

KITRO – provides food and beverage outlets with an innovative solution to optimize their performance by reducing avoidable food waste.

Smart cities

Antavi – captures and analyzes human behavior of crowds and mobile workforces in real time.

Parquery AG – developed a smart parking solution that automatically identifies in real-time available parking spots using still images (snapshots) from existing cameras.

Spark Horizon – based in Switzerland and UK, the startup installs and operates a fast charging network at high traffic influential location, providing the best service free of charge. The startup offers publishers an influential media platform to deliver their messages and bring communities towards sustainable development.

Rent`n`Share – is an intrapreneurial team co-created by ICT provider Swisscom and insurance company AXA Winterthur. Their collaboration offers a flexible long-term car-rental solution combined with a peer2peer car-sharing option.

All selected startups will benefit from a wide range of offers including no-strings attached funding, access to some of the best known corporates locally and internationally, mentoring, among others.

(RAN)