Semi-finalists of Prix Strategis announced

Awarded every year for more than 20 years by the association HEC Espace Entreprise, Prix Strategis is steadily expanding and willing to assert itself as the Swiss entrepreneurship Prize. Prix Strategis was designed to promote promising start-ups at a key moment of their existence in a financial, mediatic and strategic point of view. To make the 20th edition of the Prize special as well as the following ones, the organisers decided to open Prix Strategis to all start-ups throughout Switzerland.

More than 50 Start-ups applied for the 22^nd edition of the award. The jury gathered for the first time on Wednesday, 26 November, to determine the semi-finalists. The criterions were Innovation, Expansion and Realization. The selected companies prove that Prix Strategis has really become a Swiss award. Four of the companies are from Western Switzerland, four are based in the German speaking region and one comes from Ticino.

The semi-finalists in alphabetical order:

Bcomp develops and patents technologies allowing the fabrication of eco superior products from natural fibres. The products of the company replace aluminium, carbon- or glass fibre composites and make structures more efficient in terms of weight, rigidity, shock absorption, and damping. The first customers of Bcomp were from the sports industry. Today Bcomp’s materials are used in a brod range of products.

DAHU has developed a new generation of ski boots which does allow its carrier to endure a whole day of winter sports with one pair of shoes. The DAHU ski boot has the same capabilities like a traditional ski boot on the slopes, the DAHU distinguishes itself through a removable exoskeleton that allows to hike, to go shopping, or to visit a restaurant in an unmatched level of comfort, and in an appealing design.

eSMART: Reducing energy consumption lies at the heart of eSMART. The service allows electricity, water and heating consumption to be analysed at a glance. The connected devices can be managed via smartphone or tablet. This way customers can keep tabs on their energy consumption and costs.

FEMTOPRINT is an innovative way of producing micro devices out of glass or other transparent substrates, integrating optical, fluidic and mechanical features down to the nano-scale in a single substrate. The technology allows to create a large variety of microdevices for different application fields such as optics and photonics, micromechanics and optomechanics, microfluidics and optofluidics, micromolding and 5D memories.

InSphero is a leading supplier of organotypic, biological in vitro 3D microtissues for highly predictive drug testing. The company currently counts all of the top ten global pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies as customers and is helping them to implement its patented microtissue technology in their development work-flow.

The recent Empa spin-off Monolitix AG specialises in compliant mechanisms. These are frictionless and wear-free and are also lighter, more hygienic and cheaper than conventional joint mechanisms. They have an enormous range of potential applications in the most diverse fields.

QualySense develops high-end solutions for grains, seeds and beans sorting. The unique and proprietary devices enable sorting grains, seeds and beans reliably by biochemical and/or geometrical properties. The sorting devices, the QSorter series, generate benefits in quality control, process optimization, and risk management.

rqmicro provides a novel system for the rapid detection of water- and foodborne pathogens. The main USPs are superior sensitivity and a time to result of under one hour. Compared to the classic cultivation-dependent methods that require days for a result, rqmicro's approach yields results in a significantly shorter time with higher accuracy and lower detection limits.

The ScanTrust solution protects brand owners and authors from counterfeiting. It is based on a QR code which is integrated into the packaging or directly into the product. The customer scans the code using a smartphone app and by doing so simultaneously calls up further information about the item. The generated customer information is forwarded to the manufacturer, which can then use the data to optimise its products.

In April 2015 five finalists will be selected out of the nine semi-finalists. The award ceremony will be held on 28 April. More information on the website of Prix Strategis.