Ten new high growth Swiss startups will compose the venture leaders China team 2017. They will showcase Swiss innovation at the World Economic Forum in Dalian.

From June 25 to July 4, the selected startups will learn about the opportunities of doing business in China, and meet potential investors and business partners. They will also benefit from a direct access to high level visibility and networking opportunities. Jean-Jacques de Dardel, the Ambassador of Switzerland to the People’s Republic of China, describes venture leaders China as “a flagship program for Swiss startups”, offering unprecedented opportunities for them to discover the potential of the Chinese market. venture leaders will once again showcase the best of our country’s innovation potential in China this year. “With prior venture leaders alumni such as Dacuda who was recently acquired by Magic Leap, or greenTEG who expanded its market in China, the program is strengthening its reach at every edition, as well as its impact on the participating startups”, explains Jordi Montserrat, Managing Director of venturelab.

A technology driven market with potential for every startup
Today the Chinese economy is turned towards innovation, which opens a vast range of business opportunities for innovative startups. This year, the selected team comprises top Swiss startups in the cleantech, ICT, mobility or medtech fields. Three out of the ten startups are ranked amongst Switzerland’s best 10 startups in the TOP100 Swiss Startups. Six of them in total are listed in the ranking (see their short descriptions on page 2 and 3). “Identifying key partners and building strong relationships is capital to be successful in China, and this is made possible thanks to venture leaders”, explains Jordi Montserrat.

A unique visibility opportunity for Swiss startups at the World Economic Forum in Dalian
On June 28 and 29, 2017, the Swiss National Startup Team China will join the World Economic Forum’s 11thAnnual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian. This unique opportunity was created thanks to a unique collaboration with the Swiss Embassy, swissnex China and representatives of the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem over the past years. The visibility of the program has been exceptional so far; with the World Economic Forum, Swiss startups now have even greater exposure and networking opportunities.



The venture leaders China 2017 (the Swiss National Startup Team China) at a glance:

ASTROCAST, Sandeep Thakur (Aerospace, EPFL) 
www.astrocast.net
ASTROCAST solves the burning need of a low cost global M2M (Machine to Machine) and IoT (Internet of Things) communication service. This is possible by using low cost nano-satellites in space and highly optimal communication protocol designed for global mobility applications. No matter whatever and wherever the clients' assets are, it is now affordable to connect them to Cloud through ASTROCAST network. ASTROCAST service helps clients in remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, intelligent data and geolocation services in a cost-effective manner.

BestMile, Raphaël Gindrat (Mobility, ICT, EPFL)
www.bestmile.com
BestMile is a technology company providing distributed and highly scalable cloud technology leveraging the full potential of autonomous vehicles to tackle global mobility challenges. With offices in Lausanne (Switzerland), San Francisco (USA) and London (UK), BestMile commercializes the first fleet automation platform allowing for the intelligent operation and optimization of autonomous vehicle fleets, regardless of their brand or type and managing both fixed-route and on-¬demand service types.

Climeworks, Valentin Gutknecht (Cleantech, ETHZ)
www.climeworks.com
Climeworks provides solutions for efficiently capturing CO2 out of ambient air. They offer a competitive and environmentally friendly CO2 supply to their customers. Their CO2 enables the production of carbon-neutral renewable fuels allowing for efficient storage of renewable energies.

Flyability, Xiaolin Briod-Wang (Electronics, mechanics, UAV’s)
www.flyability.com
Flyability is a Swiss company building safe drones for inaccessible places. By allowing drones to be used safely in cities, inside buildings, and in contact with people, it enables new interactions and services with UAVs and solving the two most critical issues of one of the fastest growing industries: collisions and injury risks. The company’s first market is in industrial inspection where it avoids sending people in dangerous and confined spaces for the inspection of Energy, Heavy Industries, Oil & Gas and Maritime assets. It is also working with Search & Rescue to assess emergency situations without putting humans at risk.

Lunaphore, Ata Tuna Ciftlik (Micro- Nanotechnologies, EPFL)
www.lunaphore.com
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 made genomics testing possible for everybody today, Lunaphore will make possible an order-of-magnitude higher number of tissue biomarker checks for each tumor.

Oviva, Kai Eberhardt (Medtech, ETHZ)
www.oviva.com/ch
Oviva is a leading provider of technology-enabled medical nutritional therapy by applying technology to improve patient experience, care efficiency and effectiveness. Oviva disrupts the traditional model by a proprietary technology to provide remote patient treatment via a smartphone app with an expert system support.

Technis, Wiktor Bourée (ICT, Electronics, mechanics, EPFL)
www.mytechnis.com
Technis revolutionizes one major aspect of facility management: activity monitoring. Staying true to its Swiss roots, Technis does so in the most discrete and precise way: through the flooring. By making the surface sensitive and by coupling this surface to powerful artificial intelligence, a real-time overview of the activity in your infrastructure is made accessible from any internet-connected device. Your personalized dashboard furthermore allows for external data crossing, thus allowing for resource optimization, queue management and activity prediction.

UrbanFarmers, Roman Gaus (Cleantech, Uni St. Gallen)
www.urbanfarmers.com
Urban farmers is a global pioneer in urban farming, having established a global presence with operations in Switzerland, the Netherlands, US and Brazil. The company is a Swiss life-science champion with several prizes and awards and is poised to benefit from the global consumer trend towards more sustainable, locally grown food.

VIU VENTURES, Peter Kaeser (Product, Manufacturing, Uni St. Gallen)
https://ch.shopviu.com/en/
VIU prescription glasses and sunglasses unite brilliant design with a transparent manufacturing process and fair prices. VIU neither wants to imitate major labels nor follow mass production lines. The sole aim is to create utterly unique and inspirational products. The collections are designed in Switzerland by Fabrice Aeberhard, VIU’s Creative Director. Each individual pair is then crafted in more than 80 manual steps at a traditional manufacturer in the Italian Dolomites and on Honshu Island. By delivering directly from the manufacturer to the customer, VIU offers high-quality design and sustainable products at revolutionary prices.

ZuriMED, Xiang Li (Medtech, ETHZ)
www.zurimed.com
ZuriMED commercializes a revolutionary device for surgical knee ligament reconstruction, the “Bone-Tendon-Bone (BTB) Conversion-Kit™”. The solution effectively converts a less painful hamstring autograft (a patient’s own tissue), or any other flexible graft, into a higher performance BTB-like graft.
 
About venture leaders: The home of the Swiss national startup teams
Created in 2001, venture leaders offers one-week roadshows in Boston (Life Science), Silicon Valley (Technology), New York (Fintech) and China (all domains). This includes presentations to local investors, partners and industry experts as well as business workshops and company visits. Further to getting a unique visibility in Switzerland and abroad, as well as building a strong network, the participants are part of a team of entrepreneurs sharing the same objectives and challenges. They are unique Ambassadors of the thriving Swiss startup scene and our country’s innovation power. So far, more than 300 startups participated in the program today. Some were acquired by Apple or Intel. In total, 42 venture leaders are listed in the actual TOP100 Swiss Startups rankingsuch as L.E.S.S., Bcomp, Knip, Flyability, Ava, Amal Therapeutics, Gamaya and Lunaphore.
 
Partners
This year the venture leaders China program is supported by digitalswitzerland, Gebert Rüf Stiftung, swissnex China, Canton of Vaud, Canton of Zurich, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich and CTI.