Emerging talent | The Falling Walls Summit, Berlin
The category Emerging Talents of the“Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year” award recognises students and early-career professionals for their innovative ideas. Fifty talents from all over the world presented their ideas for breakthroughs. The main prize in the category went to Ana Montalban-Arques with her pitch on Breaking the Wall of Ineffective Cancer Therapies. Her novel approach applies bacteria as a stand-alone therapy for colon cancer, a therapeutic approach that shows the striking efficacy of bacteria as monotherapy. Ana Montalban-Arques is a Post Doc at the University of Zurich, a UZH Entrepreneur Fellow since 2020 and is currently preparing to establish a spin-off based on her work.
WatchAdvisor AG | Go Global Awards 2021
The International Trade Council‘s Go Global Awards help celebrate innovative, unique and enterprising businesses. For the 2021 awards, the committee analysed the globalisation and innovation strategy of 6’400 companies from 178 countries. Switzerland’s WatchAdvsior AG won the category in Fashion/Lifestyle. Founded in 2014 in Baar, Zug, WatchAdvisor connects its community with the best brands in luxury and lifestyle and offers marketing partners strong add-on platform services. The startup leverages more than 50 years of experience in media and the watch industry to anticipate trends and deliver valuable content for its community. The platform today covers the top 50 watch brands
Agrosustain | Thrive Female Founder Award 2021
The THRIVE Europe Challenge solves problems of the European agrifood industry, accelerates the development of the ecosystem, and selects the best startups and scaleups for investment and global recognition. The Challenge is closely aligned with the Farm to Fork Strategy within the European Green Deal—which seeks to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The challenge is organised by Thrive by SVG Ventures, the top global VC firm by AgTech portfolio count based in San Francisco. Agrosustain was selected as winner of the Female Founder Award. Agrosustain, headed by Olga Dubey, aims to reduce food waste and support organic food production by developing farm to fork solutions, like biological fungicides and coatings.
Qaptis | ClimateLaunchpad 2021
Over 2,136 climate tech startups from 55 countries applied for the 2021 edition of ClimateLaunchpad, the global green business ideas competition. After months of intense Boot Camps, training and coaching, 70 finalists made it to the Global Grand Final. Qaptis took home the third-place prize for its innovation that transforms conventional trucks into low-emission vehicles with a plug-in carbon capture kit.
Holodia | ComCast pilot project
Following their participation in the 2021 Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars, eight startups secured pilot projects and agreements with Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky. Holodia from Switzerland worked with the Comcast Fitness Center on a pilot to deliver their platform HOLOFIT to Comcast Employees. The startup’s product HOLOFIT, is an immersive, hardware agnostic, connected FitTech virtual reality platform that merges gaming and fitness, increasing user engagement and physical activity. With their solution, Holodia addresses a $75B VR market.
(RAN)
Image: Falling Walls