Start-ups create jobs

Dear reader

Yesterday was the inauguration of Flisom’s pilot production plant in Niederhasli. More than 50 people are already employed at the cleantech company, which started out as an ETH Zurich spin-off in 2005 and grew to its current size at Empa’s technology centre glaTec in Dübendorf. It develops roll-to-roll production technology for low-cost, high-performance CIGS thin-film solar cells on flexible plastic foil. The main funder, India’s Tata Group, has already invested more than CHF50 million in Flisom.

Flisom is not the only start-up company on which we report this week that has reached the size of an SME. Scandit currently has 26 employees and 20,000 license holders in more than 100 countries use its solutions. Its mobile barcode scanner was recently integrated into Coop’s shopping app. Instead of a clunky scanner, consumers can now use their smartphone in 100 Coop stores to scan products and thus bypass the queue at the cashier.

Fintech start-up Sentify today launched a new artificial intelligence-based service that identifies important events and issues related to listed stocks worldwide; it also employs 50 people worldwide.

All three companies intend to increase their employee numbers, as all are aiming for strong future growth – and this also applies to the ambitious younger start-ups that we reported on this week.

These include CashSentinel – the fintech from Yverdon completed a financing round and also reported an increase in the number of transactions settled through CashSentinel – and the three new carriers of the CTI Startup Label: Contovista, another fintech start-up that is also already successful in the market, and the two medtech companies CoreMedic and Medyria.

Next week brings several opportunities to get to know dozens of other projects with potential. On Monday, Investor Day from venture and CTI Invest and then venture’s Award Ceremony take place in Zurich. Investor Forum in St. Gallen and SICTIC Investor Day in Zurich will both be held on Wednesday. Finally, the winner of the SwissUpStartChallenge will be announced on Thursday in Brugg-Windisch.

Finally, I want to point out some important deadlines: you have until Sunday to sign up for the Swiss Startups Awards. The registration deadlines for the Heuberger Winterthur Young Entrepreneur Award and the Seif Awards for Social Entrepreneurship run until the end of June. Also to the end of June, cleantech start-ups can apply to the Swiss Energy and Climate Summit; the 10 best start-ups will present to the 1,000 high-profile visitors at the congress for free.

Have a relaxing weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Managing Editor, startupticker.ch